Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse
Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse- AEP # 1- detail - Gregory J. Rose 2025
Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse is a new body of work predicated on those energies within these other worldly spaces created via collective subconscious memory. It’s relevant that my dad was an electrical lineman. One of the first Black union Presidents of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) in PA. I was raised as a blue-collar kid. If you are not working 8-12 hr. shifts that’s considered part-time work…not a job or career. I am speaking with sarcasm, of course…to a degree. When I was trying to explain to my father at an age of 19 or so that I was going to attend college for art, things went way left. The energy became rooted in fear and worry. How are you going to make a living, get health insurance, make a life and way for you and your family? I can now see the message, under the rage and intense reaction, from my father’s conversation with me: Simply my dad wanted to whoop my ass and knock some sense into me. Funny in some regard, if you grew up like I did as a Generation X spawn. We all laugh now, but that was the sentiment in those days for many of us young adults.
For some reason at a very young age my “energy” has been, for lack of a better word, intense, fast paced, fluid, broken, implied, soft and extreme. Oh, yes like life, the ebb and flow of my “energy” within has been like a mirror—it shows the reflections in the beautiful intersectional contradictions of molecules and particles, positive and negative charges, dancing in an array of styles to move and develop those spaces we see in our modern societies. The parties are at the substations and grow beyond our planet to the satellites and star links above. Energies build up in and out of walls, phones, devices, appliances, whole houses, watercraft and cars. Planes, trains and automobiles, and now EV’s. Smart TV’s and social media portals into other dimensions of escape.
Recalling my college plan conversation with my father brought me to the idea of the “escape”: that energy I tapped into from Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Energy deep within song, earth and quilted directions found on the roofs of Slave shacks leading the way to “Freedom”. I wanted “freedom”. To skateboard wherever I wanted. I needed space to test boundaries on all levels. To be brave enough to leave the Lehigh Valley. To leave the steel mills, print mills, the smell of Pfizer pharmaceuticals as we passed the factory every day to and from home, school and work. “Freedom” from the negative choices of the corner and those glorified ways of the street—fast money, fast connections, fast death. Or just the slow demise of yourself and neighborhood(s) as one could settle on staying on the stoop and talking about the local high school football game with a cigarette or joint in your mouth and cheap beer or forty in your hand. Or take a real leap like the youth today and be sipping on some MD 20/20…oh TikTok.
AEP # 7, Mixed Media on Paper 25 x 38 Inches 2025 Gregory J. Rose
Of course, cocaine, LSD, crank and heroin were available as well—hell, the Grateful Dead were still touring, and you bought your incense and roach clips at the local head shops. But I passed the test and made it to the last stop sign in my town. I left and started to push my way through the energy fields ahead of me as I now speak of my journey after 29 years of walking urban spaces. New York, York, Phillipsburg, Philly, Easton, Bethlehem, Pittsburgh, LA, Brea, Anaheim, Venice Beach. Minneapolis, St Paul, Baltimore, Maryland, Miami, Coco Beach. Appalachian trails Wolf’s Rocks, Panama, Costa Rica, Venice, Italy alleyways and grottos. Senegal—East, West, North and South. Local, Regional, National-international adapter.
Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse is predicated on those energies within these spaces and places. Back to my Father's Call and Response. I am tapping into those stories and ideas, based on substations, the electric grid, the electromagnetic fields, the protons—neutrons, electrons and ions. The star dust from galaxies beyond—the overall embedded earthly energies. Topographical autobiographical maps of my travels thus far in my now almost 50 years on this celestial rock. Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse is representative of a new style and way of working. The pace, sounds, rhythm, beats, buzzes, zaps, baps, booms—maybe even a bassoon playing from the practice room in the nearby music program on campus. It’s the risky and yet thought-provoking presentation of “orchestra punk”, featuring the sounds of an oboe playing through a guitar amp and loop petal. The singers are the chorus of drones zipping through the skies promising safety and breaching privacy while focusing on documentation of our worlds.
AEP #1 Mixed Media on Paper 38 ×25 Inches 2025 Gregory J. Rose
Laid out like blue prints, a diary of walks in these transcendent cities during different times of day. Maybe morning around 5 am when I start to hear the birds—waterfowl and small tree sprites singing and playing in the trees. Or about 5- 5:30pm in January—on highway 94 or 35 in Minneapolis, MN as the sun reflects off all the buildings as we enter back into the downtown area. When the sun is behind you but the glare in front—so extreme you hope to have sunglasses or your visor to help with the strength and intensity of light. At dusk or near evening, when the sun fades to soft colors and reflections begin to fade and gradually soften in the distance. I’m speaking a lot of the Midwest because that is where I live and work most times of the year, if I am not traveling. That frontier space still. A geography that hasn’t lost its connection with discovery or being a new age pioneer. A space that I hold dear and consider an unsung hero in the Black Abstractionist Movement of the Midwest. A movement and energy discovered via research and an NEA grant demonstrating the vast different and complex realities coined in 2022. You can find more here: Change is God - Take Root Among The Stars: curated and exhibited at Soo Visual Arts Center in 2022.
Audacious Electromagnetic Pulse is my manifesto, my mantra, my chant. The audacity to paint and mark the surface the way I choose, with vigorous paced moves that speak to my codex build over years of creating art. A system built from experiences and stories told of a black boy who loved and looked up to a father. A father who provided and did his best to nurture and guide. A father who was day in and day out about the electric company, voltage, positive and negative charges. But most important was his encouragement towards hard work, sticking with your craft, learning through experience and being the author of your own story. The electromagnetic pulses that surround and move through our worlds are told through my eyes on these purple paper surfaces. Prince Purple, Minnesota Vikings purple, snow in the evening purple. A place where you must have the audacious energy and grit to make it through the long, and at times lonely, introspective winters. The audacity to boldly attack every green space in the spring and summer to naturally gain more vitamin D. The space I have the audacity to take up space and paint.
