discard after using

the lone gunman theory…….

Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com):

This is an object. It’s a Time Magazine cover, torn off the rest of the particular issue. It’s been stored in a three-ring binder for nearly 40 years. I found it at library discard sale for 10¢. It’s one of my most treasured found items. I’m a dork.

It’s the October 2, 1964, edition of Time Magazine with a cover story about the resulting findings of the Warren Commission. It sports an extraordinary illustration by Boris Artzybasheff, one of the all time great unheralded illustrators in American history. Boris was the very first illustrator I ever really noticed. when I was around five years old, I would cut his images out of magazines and tape them to my clothes (and pretend to be a space pirate or some damned thing). I really did!

AC:it's like that clerk was speaking for an entire cosmic truth or something.

But, it’s not the poignant qualities of this superb image that makes me treasure this item. It’s that rubberstamp plopped on Lee Harvey Oswald’s forehead that sez it all. It’s so perfect that it’s hard to believe it was the snap judgement of some nameless library clerk simply stamping discard on magazine covers before they tossed them out. It’s one of those perfect serendipitous pieces of synchronicity. A magic moment caught in time. A fraction of a second and wham! Move on.


For years I’ve kept this thing and periodically looked at it in wonder. I’ve hoped to find a use for this idea/image/whatever in my work over the decades, but i never have. It’s a marvel that extends no further than the mere fact of it’s existence, sitting there in my junk waiting to be rediscovered and wondered over again. The simple quick commentary of a nameless clerk who managed to hit the nail on the head

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One Response to discard after using

  1. Inès Ortega (Clauni) says:

    Lee Harvey Oswald was somehow discarded as a human being, too, as well as the magazine. How old was he, then? How he got involved within that major struggle of power? Poor insignificant krewe, thrown away as an used paper napkin, just as the magazine.

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