(photos by Jon Waldo)

A very good friend, Jon Waldo, has a show opening this Friday in Chicago at Linda Warren Projects. I love his work and how he talks about it:

On Sundays, when my father brought me to church, I could rarely stay focused on the mass. Instead I'd stare at the stain glass windows and paintings. The canvases usually contained figures placed centrally, without context, floating on monochromed fields of gold. The Nave seemed to flash and float with color and light.

I grew up Jewish in an Irish Catholic town and used to go to Midnight Mass with my friends. I'd sit in the pew and look at the paintings and stained glass, awed. It was a visual explosion, so foreign; it was storytelling about death. Jon brought me right back to it.

When I draw I look for objects that resonate. The subject of each stencil are not static because they can be recreated at any time, free of contextual restraints. I found that memories could be transformed by repeatedly recalling recollections.

See why I love the guy and his work?

A friend, Collin, who had studied theology with a specific interest in Native Americans told me that I was essentially doing what the Shamans do - traveling back in time to fix the past and change the future.

For me, there is a simplicity about my subject matter and the relatively uncomplicated manner in which the subjects of my paintings are depicted. As a native New Englander, I have long been interested in the 19th-century Transcendentalist thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who called attention to and celebrated the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.

These paintings exude the pop art feel of 1970s rock-album cover designs, but without any of the self-conscious irony that has become so common in a lot of contemporary art that makes such references. Responding to the tenor of these times, I believe my newest paintings express a certain sense of urgency about just how worthwhile⎯or necessary⎯it is or might be right now to pay attention to and recognize the value, in many senses of the word, of everyday experiences and the most familiar objects and events of daily life.

If you're in Chicago and see his show, let me know what you think. If you want to see more of his work, www.jonwaldo.com.