Self-portrait with Half a Beard

1976 - 2025

On October 29, 1976, I shaved the right side of my face and traveled west toward the North Carolina mountains for the weekend, stopping in several cities along the way.

Journal entry, November 1976: I considered the act of shaving and walking around in public with a half-shaven face to be a work of art. My initial intention was to create a work of art out of my body, to conflate my art and my life….The idea of a self-portrait as a dynamic, infinitely changing three-dimensional event as opposed to a normal, static, two-dimensional portrait.

On January 28, 2025, I shaved the right side of my face and traveled west toward the Virginia mountains.

I considered the act of shaving half my face to be not an artwork or a performance, but a simple expression of the state of the world: self-centered, absurd, contemptuous of the opinions of other people, perversely divided. I mock both myself and the expectations and requirements of our current moment; I refuse the bifurcated society we have set ourselves up to become, spiteful and petty, revengeful and mean. I am filled with both pity and disdain for half the population of my own country, those who would look at my face and because it is different, assume I am a danger or a threat, those who would loose upon someone perceived to be different their hatred and lawlessness, knowing in the core of their being that this is wrong, knowing even, that their own actions will come home to them tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow, inexorably, definitely, dreadfully.