Memoirs of a Media Zombie

"Pigs" Steven Lee Matz Oil on stretched canvas 30"x40"

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My mother always had a penchant for collecting pig statuary and a variety of related kitsch, she adores pigs to this day. Spending my formative years amid a bijouterie of swine must have had some whimsical effect upon my supple young psyche, or perhaps it was rather the opposite. I can recall one instance in particular of sitting in my mother and father's living room on a late summer afternoon, spending what seemed like an eternity staring at a small brass pig. The brass pig itself could have been no more than two or three inches in length, possibly two in diameter, but as I sat staring at it's face I noticed something off in it's smile. A look, not of fear, or of melancholy, or even of panic, no none of these at all! Rather it held a knowing, almost human countenance, of acceptance. As if to say: "Yes, I know what is next. But is that not my lot in life?" Perhaps this story can be taken as some sort of realization of death in my young mind, but if it is to be taken as such than it must also be considered a revelation into the deeper mysteries of the way in which sometimes even the most trivial aspects of life and the baubles associated therewith can lead one into a deeper knowledge, or at least a sense of one. I reckoned at my young age  that the animal that this brass statuette represented was a lot like most people in life: sweet, smart, and ultimately doomed. Of course perceptions, like many other aspects of life, are not a static constant. Later in life I would look upon that brass pig with contempt for not only it's seeming passivity and the inherent laziness which said passivity is often a trait of, but for being made of that most bourgeois of  metals: brass!

                                                                                                                                                                                         -Steven Lee Matz