[This doesn’t load well on mobile devices, desktop is preferred.]
Have you ever found a long forgotten pile of Playboy magazines in an attic, and spent an afternoon searching for the hidden bunny on the cover of each one? This is like that, only if you threw the magazines into a blender with some fake blood, real tears, cigarette ash, and cupcake icing,
(still being updated, I’ve not found all the correlations yet)
This is in chronological order as best I can wrangle. Stefan deleted a lot of content regularly and reposted repeatedly, which muddies the timeline. Stefan did not give his own work the respect it deserved, and most often took craptastic photographs with his phone rather than scanning his work in properly; that is, aside from his website and a few years of regular tumblr activity.
His skills progressed and sharpened incredibly in the few years we were together. The difference between 2006 and 2010 is vast and impressive.
When I first started this now sprawling project, I expected only to find scattered references to me and my life. It started randomly, recognizing a face here, an arm there. As I found more and more I began to methodically go through the entirety of his available work, slowly learning his logic, following his thought patterns of association. I came to realize that almost everything he has posted online is in response/reference to my own posts.
(If even half of my associations are totally off base and delusional, this is still a rather significant number of similarities.)
I’ve been uploading my photographs and artwork to flickr since 2005. Evidently Stefan had access to my flickr password, and not only could he see my private/uncensored images, but for a number of years my flickr also included auto-uploads of EVERYTHING from my phone. Every “how does my ass look?” photo, every Reminder-To-Self pic, every saved internet jpeg, every photo that wasn’t worth the low bar of an instagram post. He used this access for years.
Talented and creative as Stefan is as an artist, his work becomes even more impressive seeing the thought process behind it all. True mad brilliance. I wish he was less fucking clever, maybe I’d have pieced it together before he was gone forever.
This collection may strike many as disturbing and obsessive, but Stefan and I were cut of the same couture cloth of craziness. I have compulsively rearranged furniture since early childhood, and have panic attacks every time I get dressed. My life is one of agoraphobia, anxiety, fixation, inescapable pain, illness, and solitude; a life few understand. But Stefan and I, we were comrades in the Sisterhood of Self Consciousness and the Brotherhood of Broken People.
Besides… I’ve been objectified, drawn, photographed, posed, and painted since I was four years old. I’ve been used for art all my life.
I’d have forgiven his secret use of my life as his inspiration in an instant. I’d be flattered and thrilled.
He truly saw me.
Stefan is what makes sense in my strange world.
Even the darkest damaged parts of him.
The focus of this collection is on Stefan’s art. However, once I documented the entirety of his available artwork, I added links to long form communications between us. Some are ugly and vicious, some are repetitive and pathetic, some are touching and sweet. These are not necessary to read / listen to, but I felt they should be included for the sake of archival documentation, greater artistic context, and my own full transparency.