SLOw Me Down

By Al Dente

You've just spent the better part of a decade establishing yourself in the brutally competitive but incredibly invigorating Los Angeles "lowbrow / underground" art scene. You've gained some traction, you're in lots of exciting art shows, and you're even selling art and gaining regular collectors. Then one day, a quirk of fate and a change of work circumstances drop you into a quiet, sleepy little town on the central coast of California, where the "art scene", such as it is, is defined by retirees painting floral still-lifes and majestic landscapes of green rolling hills or serene seascapes. Where are the freaks and dirty little buggers that define the artists you've come to love? Surely they must be here, somewhere, hiding in the corners, unexposed because there are no art sales venues, nor buyers' market, to support them. But we know they're here. We'll find them, and perhaps finding something new in ourselves along the way. This is that story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Dente
• Release date: Aug 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310057809

Al Dente

Matt "Al Dente" Foote was born in New York City, grew up in the Arizona desert, and now lives somewhere on the central coast of California.

Book preview

SLOW Me Down

From boot dust and moonshine to beach sand and good wine.

One day we’re standing in a mountain pass, watching the sun burn silhouettes against the saguaros, turning the desert sand gold. A few days later our feet are in a different kind of sand, toes in the ocean.

We were just sitting there in our funky little stucco apartment in Arizona. The owners of the complex we lived in had just sold it, and the new owners were bastards. Their first order of business was cutting down all the trees on the property.

We were both unemployed. We’d just started taking classes at the local community college because it felt bad enough to be unemployed, but we also felt unemployable. We were both college drop outs, and frankly, neither of us liked to work all that much. Not in the traditional sense, anyway, not in the realm of potential jobs that were actually available to us. If work was, like, writing novels and painting pictures and stuff, then great, no problem, bring it on. But taking abuse in exchange for minimum wage, washing peoples’ dishes, selling them gidgets and widgets and pills and potions, no thanks. And yet, that’s all that either of us were good for, all we’d ever done. I washed dishes, made coffee, lifted boxes, and sold ads. She sold clothes and makeup. And it was fine when