VONZWECK announces
The Prosthetic Eye
By Chris Deris
Opening Reception Thursday May 1, 2007 6-9pm
Open Thursdays in May 6-9pm
Or by appointment
For the last planned exhibition here at VONZWECK I’m taking it back, back… way back to Chris Deris.
I didn’t go to my senior prom, long story involves a small lame Catholic highschool and a female friend who I really had no aspirations to date but thought would have been fun to go to prom with and her desire to date some soccer dude and blah blah blah. So instead I did nothing for a few hours then went to hang out post prom with Chris Deris. He was a year behind me and had a date (Chris always has a date!) but since they were juniors she had a curfew, so after he deposited her at home Chris and I were going to meet up and go into the French Quarter and do… pretty much any damn thing we wanted (I miss you, French Quarter of my youth with your lax, lax implementation of the 18 drinking age and more or less every other stupid law). But somehow on the way to an isolated local to make time with his date Chris ran over a stop sign in his sister’s car and thought he would be in trouble so called our portion of the evening off. I think I went home and watched Night Flight.
The above story should not be read as an allegory. My point is simply that I have known Chris for a long long time and that of all the people who attended Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana, during the four years I was there I think Chris (and of course my sister) are the only people I still talk to (and come to think of it I probably talk to Chris more than I talk to my sister). Lots of people had plans and were gonna’ do stuff; take over the world, turn pro, write the next great American novel, etc but instead most of them just got themselves/someone else pregnant and started to vote Republican. Chris however went on to Atlanta College of Art for his BFA and then RISD for his MFA (even if itis only in Painting) and now is back in New Orleans making art and teaching at Loyola University.