Perhaps the only artwork on this blog that is un-officially "at large." This is the last known photograph.
The first year of the five-year architecture program at RPI is basically art school. You get introduced to concepts like "surface" and "threshold" (the juxtaposition of interior and exterior space), and paths of movement through open spaces. (People used to ask me if I was going to do "commercial or residential" and the reality is that decision probably would not come until at least the final year of the program so I used to say that I planned on doing out-houses as a joke.) In our studio classes we would dive through the garbage and make sculptures out of cans and sticks and other "abstract" things. Around halloween we were working on a series of charcoal drawings and were given the assignment to draw a "haunted self-portrait." I am a huge fan of the Sopranos and had the idea to do me smoking a cigar. I was proud of it so I paid $184 to have it framed in a little shop in downtown Troy, New York. At the time I thought I got ripped off big-time, but it was actually a pretty reasonable price.
It hung on the walls of my room at the fraternity house and a few apartments for several years along with a Cuban cigar shipping crate I found at an architectural salvage store outside of Albany and a little collage of cigar wrappers I made and put into a cheap frame from Target. After moving back to the Boston area I proceeded to have 5 apartments in 6 years so I downsized my inventory of stuff pretty quickly. In transition I had the idea to "lend" my paraphernalia to a cigar shop called Churchills in the Millennium Hotel in the Faneuil Hall section of downtown Boston. When they went out of business I guess someone forgot to call me. By the time I caught wind of it everything had been auctioned off or given away and the windows boarded up. When I walked inside after reaching the owner on his cell and arranging a time to swing by there were only a few items left leaning against the walls and on the floor which included my little collage, but not the portrait or the shipping crate. The owner wasn't sure if I was going to blow my stack and felt kind of bad so he gave me a little sketch of Castle Island in South Boston in a wooden frame badly damaged by all the cigar fumes over the years and I took my little collage.
Now that the FBI got to the bottom of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist maybe they can help me out. If you or anyone you know has the artwork titled "Cigar Self-Portrait" or have information that might lead to its whereabouts, and happen to read this ... I hope you think it looks nice. I always thought the smoke blended with the shadow on my cheek in a weird way and considered trying to fix it at one point.
It hung on the walls of my room at the fraternity house and a few apartments for several years along with a Cuban cigar shipping crate I found at an architectural salvage store outside of Albany and a little collage of cigar wrappers I made and put into a cheap frame from Target. After moving back to the Boston area I proceeded to have 5 apartments in 6 years so I downsized my inventory of stuff pretty quickly. In transition I had the idea to "lend" my paraphernalia to a cigar shop called Churchills in the Millennium Hotel in the Faneuil Hall section of downtown Boston. When they went out of business I guess someone forgot to call me. By the time I caught wind of it everything had been auctioned off or given away and the windows boarded up. When I walked inside after reaching the owner on his cell and arranging a time to swing by there were only a few items left leaning against the walls and on the floor which included my little collage, but not the portrait or the shipping crate. The owner wasn't sure if I was going to blow my stack and felt kind of bad so he gave me a little sketch of Castle Island in South Boston in a wooden frame badly damaged by all the cigar fumes over the years and I took my little collage.
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