Art City
By Daniel ‘DL’ Landes
Art by John Casey
Published Issue 134, February 2025
On the outskirts of Tucumcari, a town slowly leaking vitality like neon escaping the glass tubes which bathe the settlement in a warm glow, a man walks slowly towards the setting sun. The ancestral realm. He casts a long shadow. We are all in it. To the south, the land of the wild unbridled, a band of horses wander east towards the highway jammed with racing lorries carrying goods that are already dying upon arrival. The man heads west, the horses east, the trucks head north and south. Eventually the horses will attempt to cross the highway. They are, to a one, decimated by the 18-wheelers which don’t even break cruise control before plowing into the beasts, splitting them, exploding them, their viscera strewn about like tacky streamers at a quinceañera. The man, just before he dips below the horizon line, turns back and looks at Tucumcari, acknowledging it as the perfect setting for the theater of the absurd.
Thanks for playing.
RIP David Lynch.
Daniel “DL” Landes spent decades as a restauranteur, author and publisher. As the owner of multiple restaurants in Denver, CO – and then a hostel in Mexico – he dedicated himself to creating environments where people could work out their humanity while eating and drinking. Now relocated to Santa Fe, DL says that “living in the Galisteo Basin impresses a unique and humbling perspective. Under the expansive, enchanted New Mexican sky I can feel so small and so big. I made a career of kicking up dust; living in the storm until the storm lived in me. When the dust settled two guideposts appeared: Spend more nights under the stars; provide a service.”
Born on Friday the 13th in Salem, Massachusetts, John Casey started inventing creatures as soon as he was able to hold a crayon. Drawings that his mother saved from when he was only 3-years-old reveal his obsession with the figure. The figures in these drawings show not only the distorted perceptions of a child, but his fascination with skulls, teeth, spirographic eyes and invented body parts. His obsession with strange creatures continued throughout his youth. Monster models, dinosaurs and horror movies on television occupied much of his time as well as drawing. John graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1988 with a BFA in Painting. At the time he was making art that focused on surreal and psychological figurative painting and drawing. A bit later he added sculpture as part of his process, and his subjects continue to reveal a surreal bent in both structure and narrative. He has shown in galleries in Boston, Portland, Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as international venues in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Denmark. His work is included in collections at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California, and the Artothèque de Caen in France. John moved to the Bay Area a number of years ago and currently live in Oakland, California with his wife, artist Mary Kalin-Casey.
Check out DL’s last Birdy install, Jealous Sunbeams, in case you missed. This is John’s debut in Birdy. Keep your eyes peeled for more work by this talented artist.