In 1895 Harry Houdini first reached notoriety with his trick called "The Metamorphosis." He and his partner, both locked in trunks, would trade places, break their bonds and emerge wholly and magnificently from their prisons.
From then on, Houdini made himself a legend by time and time again escaping the bonds that would hold any mortal man.
When I look at these drawings I see not the original "meditations" I once titled them as. Not a reflection on life, nor a projection of it, instead I see the same undeniable urge of Houdini--to escape that manmade world. To astound the commonplace by uncovering the hoax, daring the impossible, wanting more than the "everyday."
We are young. I now know that even the charisma of Houdini is not enough to make him, immortal--in 1926 he died from ignoring a case of appendicitis.
Several years after I left a city that daily expects these sort of daredevil feats, I begin to know that in my mind I was constantly performing some sort of escapism. A "Houdinism" with pen and ink.
Embracing my common status, I feel separated from these pieces. I fell like I'm watching a magician on stage, not really knowing where or how his props come about, only that I can only offer them as a record of a "showbiz" career. Taking my final bows, I would run off the stage, leaving any chains empty and creaking in the limelight.
Catherine is an artist working and living in Little Rock and Conway. She's not always this maudlin. She's just "having a moment." She likes Houdini, the circus, vodka and quotation marks-which she uses to antagonize editors, professors and the "common" man.
