Jerry Smith does junkyards. “Not landfills,” he says, “but working junkyards–cranes dropping big chunks of metal, planes flying overhead, a real loud and violent atmosphere. I’m intrigued by this part of the urban environment.”
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A weirdly cartoonish couple make love fervently in a heap of crumpled beer cans, old tires, a television set with a smashed-in screen. The oil colors are deep, stormy. “See how the stuff is mashed up against each other? I wanted a kind of erotic painting, but I wanted the figures to relate to the junkyard. So the figures are mashed up against each other in the same way that all these beer cans and car parts are.”
Excesses and irony and jazz-inspired delirium. “Drinkers, dancers, revelers–I have a fascination with the Bacchanalian. Listening to early jazz, there’s a certain point of delirium they reach when five or six musicians are improvising at once, all these disparate elements coming together. It probably sounds like chaos to some people, but it all comes together, this beautiful sound.”
