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J E F F R E Y VA L L A N C E

Relics & Reliquaries

grand

central

press

GRAND CENTRAL PRESS CSUF Grand Central Art Center 125N. Broadway, Santa Ana, California 92701 714-567-7233 714-567-7234 www.grandcentralartcenter.com This book has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Jeffrey Vallance – Relics and Reliquaries for the Grand Central Art Center Gallery, Santa Ana, California, where it was presented 2 June – 22 July, 2007. Published by California State University Fullerton Grand Central Art Center and the Grand Central Press. Printed by: Prolong Press, Hong Kong First Printing March 2008 All Artwork © Jeffrey Vallance Book © 2008 Grand Central Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher and artist.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vallance, Jeffrey. Relics and reliquaries / Jeffrey Vallance. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-9771696-7-7 (978-0-9771696-7-2) 1. Vallance, Jeffrey. 2. Assemblage (Art)--United States. 3. Personal belongings--United States. I. Title. N6537.V26A4 2007 709.2--dc22

2007029712

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S This project was made possible with the help of a generous grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Galerie Nathalie Obadia 3 rue du CloĂŽtre Saint-Merri 75004, Paris, France

Margo Leavin Gallery 812 North Robertson Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90069

De Vleeshal Markt Middelburg, The Netherlands

Bernier/Eliades Gallery 11 Eptachalkou Street Athens, GR-118 51, Greece

Jeffrey Vallance (Etching, James Lorigan)

CONTENTS Relics and Reliquaries

Childhood Relics

Pop Culture Relics

Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

Richard M. Nixon Relics

Lutheran Relics

Christian Relics

VAtican Relics

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

World Travel Relics

111

Fabulous Vegas Relics

119

Texas Relics

125

Soviet Relics

131

Performance Relics

139

Relic Collections

147

Autobiographical Relics

153

Artist Biography

167

Index

174

StinginRay Collage, 1988 Jeffrey Vallance Bedroom Museum

Holy Relics

ince the early days of the Christian Church, the reverently preserved earthly remnants of saints and martyrs have been known

as “relics,” from the Latin term reliquiae, meaning “remains.” But it is not only a Christian practice to honor such things. Relics of the Buddha, including his teeth, hairs, and particles from his cremated ashes, are preserved in domed stupa shrines. Likewise, relics of the Prophet Mohammad — including a tooth, a hair from his beard, and the impression of his footprint — have been similarly honored. And there are holy political relics: a locket of George Washington’s hair is displayed at Mt. Vernon, Virginia; Abraham Lincoln’s blood-stained deathbed sheets are kept at Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C.; Napoleon Bonaparte’s “mummified tendon” (withered penis) is proudly enshrined in the private collection of a urologist. In the Communist world, the mummified bodies of Lenin and Mao are kept on public display in a state of perfect preservation. As well, relics of pop-culture icons — like the bed sheets the Beatles slept on, or Elvis’ sweaty scarves and locks of his hair — are covetously collected and kept holy. Christian relics are divided into three categories: first-class, second-class, and third-class. First-class relics are actual parts of the exhumed bodies of the saints — desiccated pieces of flesh, preserved organs, dried tongues, fingers, arms, hair, teeth, bones, skulls, and even entire mummified bodies. First-class relics also include body parts, objects, and instruments associated with the birth, life, and Passion of Jesus Christ: the Umbilical Cord of Jesus; the Gifts of the Magi; the Crib from the Manger; Straw from the Manger; the Swaddling Clothes; the Foreskin of Jesus; a Rock with the Impression of Baby Jesus’ Buttocks; the Milk Teeth of Jesus; a piece of bread from the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes; Hair from the Beard of Jesus; Fingernail Clippings from Jesus; Bones of the Ass that Jesus Rode; the Towels Jesus used to Wash the Disciples’ Feet; the Last Supper Table and Tablecloth; Bread from the Last Supper; the Holy Grail; the Coins for which

fig.1 Relics of the Prophet Mohammed

Judas Betrayed Christ; Bones of the Cock that Crowed Thrice; the Sacred Steps of the Palace of Pontius Pilot; the Whip (flagra) and the Whipping Post; the Crown of Thorns; the Veil of Veronica; the Holy Dice (lots); the Stone upon which the Lots were Cast; the Seamless Garment (Tunic of Argenteuil); the Holy Coat of Trier; the Belt of Jesus; the Sandals of Jesus; the Crucifixion Nails ; the Blood of Jesus; the Sweat of Jesus; the Tears of Jesus; the Holy Reed; the Holy Sponge; the Holy Lance; the Holy Loincloth; the Title (Titulus); the True Cross; The Stone of Unction (a slab from the Holy Sepulcher); the Oviedo Facecloth; and the Shroud of Turin. Most holy on the list are body parts of Christ shed before His death — His umbilical cord, milk teeth, hairs, and foreskin. The “Ritual of the Holy Prepuce,” a peculiar rite in which sterile women would kneel down and kiss the Holy Foreskin in order to become fertile, came into practice. All the objects used in the Passion of the Christ are extraordinarily rare and exceedingly sacred, yet I have never heard mention of even one preserved wooden object made by Jesus when He was a carpenter, all of which would certainly qualify as relics.What happened to all of His woodworking? Second-class relics are objects made sacred by close physical contact with the saints — things such as clothing and everyday objects (shoes,

fig. 2 Crown of Thorns

bowls, staffs and so on). For martyrs, the instruments of their torture and death are included in this second class. Some of my favorite relics include the finger of St. Thomas; a cascade of shorn hair from St. Therese; the grill upon which St. Lawrence was roasted alive; the miracle oil that drips from the bones of St. Nicholas (Santa Claus); the tongue of St. Anthony; the scabs of stigmatist St. Padre Pio; the tooth of Mary Magdalene; the staff of St. Bernard; oil paintings of the Madonna and Child by St. Luke; the soiled underwear of St. Thomas Becket; the bathroom floor slab on which St. Cecilia was cruelly martyred; the fragrant chamber pot of blessed Giovanni Colombini; the corporeal relics of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (the only saint who attended a birthday for George Washington); the waxy, incorrupt body of St.Vincent de Paul (patron saint of thrift stores); the arm of St. Lucy; the bell of St. Patrick; the pierced heart of St. Teresa of Avila; and the preserved hearts of St.Veronica Giuliani and St. Claire, both of which bear the symbols of the Passion, drawn miraculously as if by the hand of God on the organs. In 2001, I beheld St. Bridget of Sweden’s splendid pelvis bone enshrined in a beautiful golden reliquary at the Convent of the Bridgettine Sisters in Rome (a haven for Swedish pilgrims), where I stayed during my papal pilgrimage.

fig. 3 Crucifixion Nails

Third-class relics are objects that have been physically touched to either first-class or second-class relics. Replicas of relics which have been touched to the originals are thus made equally holy, which has, over time, led to confusion as to which ones were the originals. It is said that, like the loaves and fishes in the Bible, relics have the ability to multiply. So there is no problem in having, for example, six skulls of John the Baptist, six bodies of Mary Magdalene, 29 Holy Nails, four Holy Lances, 69 bottles of milk from the Virgin Mary, and eight Holy Foreskins in different churches throughout Europe. Wise St. Teilo knew that more than one congregation wanted his relics, so to prevent bloodshed after his death, the saint miraculously provided three bodies of himself. In the fifth century, the Bishop of Nola observed that the True Cross, especially, displayed miraculous properties of growth — if gathered together, its many splinters would provide enough lumber to build a mighty cathedral. Filings taken from the Holy Nails were often embedded into copies, to make the replicas equally holy. The Vatican makes official copies of the Veil of Veronica and touches them to the original, which is then authenticated by an official Vatican stamp and wax seal. I have one myself. fig. 4 Veil of Verona

The paramount religious significance of Christian relics lies in the belief that, one day, the bits of bones and flesh of saints will be reassembled into their glorified bodies, at the Last Judgment. While the souls of the saints are glorified in Heaven, their mortal remains wait on Earth until the resurrection. Thus the corporeal relics of a saint are still fundamental parts of the holy person’s essence, even though the saint is already in Heaven. It is said that a relic is like a light that never goes out; like an overflowing spring that never goes dry, endlessly blessing all it touches. To pray to a relic is equivalent to beseeching a living member of the Divine Court of Heaven. Thus, through relics, Heaven and Earth are joined. To early Christians, pieces of a martyr’s body were more precious than gold or jewels. In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nazinzus said

fig. 5 Wax Seal

that one drop of blood from a saint was just as precious as a saint’s entire body. For a spiritual pick-me-up, mediev al monks would sometimes dip relics into wine and drink the freshly divine libation. In an act approaching ritual cannibalism, St. Hugh of Lincoln bit off two bites from the relic arm of Mary Magdalene, saying that what he did was no different from consuming the body of Jesus in Holy Communion.

fig. 6 Elvis’Swea-soaked Scarves

If a congregation felt that their patron saint was ineffective or had deserted them, they performed a Ritual of Humiliation, wherein the saint’s relics were thrown to the floor and cursed as a means of forcing the saint to be more responsive. At the end of the Dark Ages, when the Roman Catacombs were nearly abandoned and the preservation of relics had not yet come into practice, feral dogs that had taken up residence in the burial chambers were observed gnawing on would-be sacred relics — soul-edifying, tasty doggie-bone treats! The New Testament tells of healing-cloths touched to the living body of St. Paul, just as Elvis would distribute his sweat-soaked scarves during concert performances. Cloths laid upon the cadavers of saints, known as brandea cloths, are believed to be imbued with holy power. Today, many televangelists make use of the practice by sending anointed healing-cloths to their audiences at home. In the Apocrypha is found the astonishing story of the adoration of the Magi (a.k.a. the Three Wise Men or Three Kings). The Magi

were Zoroastrian priests. After presenting their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, they were given a gift in return — a piece of the Swaddling Clothes. The Magi felt greatly honored, and brought the holy relic back with them to Babylonia. At their temple, they placed the Swaddling Clothes in fire, which was sacred to Zoroastrians. But the fire did not consume the Swaddling Clothes; instead, they miraculously turned snow white — a sign of a true holy relic. In the Middle Ages, a surefire way to prove that a relic was genuine was a “trial by fire,” in which the alleged relic was placed upon burning coals, and if it was not consumed it was proved authentic. (Clever counterfeiters soon began fashioning their fake relics out of asbestos.) In the sixth century, pilgrims venerating the tomb of St. Peter would place a cloth of precise weight into a small orifice (fenestella) in the shrine. Upon removal, the cloth was placed on a scale and found to weigh more than it did before — it had been imbued with the holy essence of the Prince of the Apostles. Saint Euphemia’s shrine near Constantinople incorporated a mechanical device, similar to a penny arcade claw-arm, that inserted sponge after sponge into the saint’s tomb, to soak up the putrefied fluid secreted by the cadaver — thus efficiently producing new relics.

fig. 7 Pope Innocent III

At the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, presided over by Pope Innocent III, it was decreed that relics were not to be sold and not to be exposed outside of their cases or shrines. Public exhibition of new relics without approved authentication was prohibited. Canon Law strictly forbids the sale of relics — only the reliquary can be sold; the relic within is a gift. The sin of selling relics was known as simony, after the New Testament heretic Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-14). The term magus denotes a member of the Zoroastrian priesthood — what the New Testament writers called a sorcerer. I wholeheartedly agree with what a sixth-century pilgrim once said: “When I find that I am in a place where there are relics of the Holy Martyrs, I am obsessed by the need to go in and venerate them.” In 803, Emperor Charlemagne decreed, “All oaths be sworn either in a church or on relics.” For European monarchs, a favorite holy relic used in coronation ceremonies was the Holy Lance. Numerous battles were fought to capture the Lance, and many replicas were made, all now vying for authenticity.

fig. 8 Emporer Charlemagne

The veneration of relics gives the believer access to the supernatural. The power of relics can be used to heal the sick, perform miracles, repel evil or enemies, win military battles, cure sick livestock, ensure bountiful harvests, bring renown upon a church, attract pilgrims and their offerings, swear oaths, anoint kings, castigate evildoers, aid in conversion, absolve sin, and reduce the period of time suffering in Purgatory. Relics have inspired artists throughout the centuries to create masterworks of art to safeguard them. Some relics, according to tradition, have the capacity to punish those who mock them. Each Catholic church is required to have a holy relic, enclosed in a flat stone and positioned in the center of the altar , in order to be consecrated. Through these relics, living Christians can seek the patronage of the Saintly Dead in Heaven.

Ornate Reliquaries In the Middle Ages, all things connected with writing were linked to the clergy. What later became shrines were at first just secure containers — chests in which manuscripts were kept. (The word clergy, from the Greek clericos, is related to clark and clerk as they all

fig. 9 Holy Lance

are writers. The word shrine is derived from the Anglo-Saxon term scrin, meaning script.) Reliquaries — also known as monstrances, ostensoriums, custodials, chasses, ossuaries, philatories, tecas, and capsules — are boxes or containers used to hold relics. They are often objects of tremendous craftsmanship, gilded and ornately decorated. Reliquaries were originally sealed, coffin-shaped coffers; later, glassfronted versions were produced, making the relics inside visible to pilgrims. The interiors of reliquaries are often richly upholstered, with the relics reverently placed upon velvet pillows. A structure built to house a reliquary is called a Martyria or Schatzkammer, and its architecture often echoes the shape of the reliquary within.The ecclesiastic procedure in which a relic is transferred from its original resting place to a location more convenient for veneration

fig. 10 stone positioned in the center of the altar

is called translation; the ritual ceremony for the official delivery at the new location is called susception.

Public veneration is only permitted for relics associated with holy persons listed in the official Catalog of Saints. Relic items from unapproved apparitions, visionaries, mystics, stigmatists, seers, and crackpots are not allowed to be publicly venerated. The Vatican has a special Relic Office that authenticates objects from those saints and holy persons declared blessed, who are candidates for canonization. For proper display and adoration of relics, a hallowed and pious atmosphere is imperative. During the Mediaeval period, the veneration of relics became so important and widespread that a literal Cult of Relics developed. The collected legends of the saints, known as hagiography, became an invaluable adjunct to the Cult of Relics. As Canon Law dictates, every house of worship was required to have a relic as part of the ritual of consecration, so every church was thus in competition with each other to obtain a major relic, and hence vying for pilgrims and their bountiful donations. fig. 11 pilgrim badges

During this relic heyday, Vatican-approved souvenir trinkets were manufactured in the form of pilgrim-badges, sold by the thousands to throngs of relic devotees. The English word tawdry is derived from St. Audrey, relating to the relic fairs set up on St. Audrey’s feast day, where cheap religious souvenirs were sold. Several Crusades were taken to the Holy Land in order to plunder relics, setting off a frantic wave of relic hunting. To this day, Osama bin Laden is still pissed-off about the Crusades. On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush called his war on terrorism a crusade, recalling the Medieval Christian’s war on Muslims in the Holy Land. Medieval cities organized commando-style raids to steal relics from other locations. If relics could not be plundered, replicas were made and touched to the originals, making the copies equally sacred — a kind of holy contamination. The mania for relics went so far in the French village of Sandrans that a shrine there presented for veneration the bones of a friendly greyhound named St. Guinefort, which had once saved the life of his master’s son. It is only one step

fig. 12 Osama bin Laden

away to display the bones of a martyr hen. Concerning the glorious craftsmanship of reliquary masterworks, St. Bernard said, “We are called to revere a saint, yet are in danger of worshipping a work of art.” Without a doubt, some of the most treasured pieces of fine art in the world are reliquaries.

Fake Relics By the end of the Middle Ages, the forging of relics became such a major industry that St. Augustine, in his book The Works of Monks, warned monks not to peddle in false relics. Over the centuries, many unscrupulous hawkers have trafficked in forged relics. The Church says that no dishonor is done to God by the continuance of an error handed down in perfect good faith by tradition. On this point, many fig. 13 St. Augustine

church scholars and I agree that even a forgery can have historical value. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, from The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), the unscrupulous Pardoner (whose cap bears a Veil of Veronica emblem) sells fake relics, in the form of pig bones, to gullible peasants, claiming that the relics will absolve sin. More recently, the Mafia took up the lucrative business of manufacturing fraudulent relics. A tremendous number of bogus relics have been made, including 17 arms of St. Andrew, 60 fingers of John the Baptist, 40 heads of St. Julian, 20 suits of armor of Joan of Arc, and 50 rosaries belonging to St. Bernadette.The Mob also faked hundreds of yards of blood-soaked bandages from the stigmata stains of St. Padre Pio. After 1960, when newspapers reported on the results of scientific tests that confirmed that the stains were actually chicken blood, sales did not slacken. When the tomb of St. Peter was unearthed in the Vatican grotto, the crypt held not only the Great Apostle’s remains but also the bones of various domestic animals, mouse bones and chicken bones — possibly the relics of the Cock that Crowed Thrice. I remember my father

fig. 14 Pardoner’s Tale

telling a humorous story about a charlatan selling chicken bones to pilgrims in Rome, saying that they were from that legendary cock. In the peddler’s box were enough bones to reassemble (or resurrect) a sizable flock of chickens.

In the study of relics, chicken bones have become synonymous with fakery. International relic expert and founder of the Los Angeles–based International Crusade for Holy Relics, Thomas Serafin, laments, “If Internet sales continue, eventually you’ll have some nut cutting up chicken bones and putting them up for sale.” I believe Serafin was waxing prophetic here, as that is exactly what I am doing in this project, except the chicken bones are authentic performance relics from the 1978 burial and 1988 exhumation of Blinky the Friendly Hen.

fig. 15 Authentic performance relics from the 1978 burial and 1988 exhumation of Blinky the Friendly Hen

It is as if Chaucer’s Pardoner hopes that the pilgrims’ genuine faith in his false relics will transform them into real ones. At the end of Pardoner’s Tale, one of the pilgrims becomes so exasperated by the Pardoner’s fake relics that he vulgarly exclaims, “You would have me kiss your excrement-stained underwear as if it were a relic of a saint!” (The stained underwear refers to St.Thomas Becket’s soiled haircloth underclothes, which were preserved as a relic). The pilgrim then swears by the Cross of St. Helena, “I will cut off your scrotum and enshrine it in a pig’s turd for a reliquary!” According to Canon Law, the penalty for making, selling, or displaying false relics is immediate ipso facto excommunication from the Church. Several saints and holy persons have been given the divine gift to distinguish true relics from false ones. I believe that a relic proven fake is no less fascinating than a real one.

fig. 16 St.Thomas Becket fig. 17 Letter verifying authenticity of bedsheet from a hotel where the Beatles shad slept

Relic Project

ince early childhood I have been an obsessive collector, verging on neotoma (being

a pack rat). I consciously started saving things in 1963, at the age of eight. I would collect objects that I thought were somehow significant, but I would also save relics from tragicomic events and personal traumas. The first time I learned about anything akin to a relic was in 1964, when I heard that someone had obtained the bed sheets from a hotel where the Beatles had slept , then cut the cloth into pieces and offered them up for sale. The Beatle bed sheets made an indelible mark on my brain. In 1965, my relic collection grew by leaps and bounds, until I turned my entire bedroom into a museum and regularly invited people over to see the installation of artifacts. It was not until 1971 that I started incorporating the collections into my artwork. I created assemblage pieces such as Industrial Revolution (1971), Scatological Cat (1972), Man with Glasses (1973), The D-LZ (1973–75), C-82 (1975–78), and The Door of the Heart (1978–1980, a sculpture which has a box of sacredheart-related relics inside). My early assemblages were inspired by the California Assemblage tradition, especially artist Ed Kienholz. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my professors at Otis Art Institute, Betye Saar and George Herms, both of the assemblage tradition. Early Christians used pagan or profane boxes to store their precious relics, as these containers were readily available. In my relic project, I have used this same approach, collecting boxes not originally designed as reliquaries. I take these profane boxes, install a window in the front, carve various elements, and attach heaps of ornate molding. I then paint, gild, and antique them, and finally apply a patina, resulting in as many as ten layers of finishes. This reliquary project is related more to artist Chris Burden’s performance relics than to the California assemblage tradition. Burden displays his relics — such as the nails he used to crucify himself to a VW Bug — in high-tech Plexiglas cases. For my performance artifacts, I

merge the idea of Chris Burden’s high-concept relics with the medieval tradition of ornate gilded reliquaries. Artists have used the convention of reliquaries in contemporary art before. Most notable are Paul Thek’s amazing meat reliquaries, Barton Lidice Beneš’ celebrity relics and curiosa, and Frank McEntire’s assemblages of discarded religious objects. In 1977, I made a series of souvenir artist’s clothing that were small, cut-up sections of paint-bespattered cloth from my worn-out painters’ pants and old sweatshirts, fig. 18 The D-LZ

recalling the Beatles bed sheets. My first deliberate use of performance relics in my art began with the Blinky the Friendly Hen project (1978–1988), in which I saved all the relics from Blinky’s burial and subsequent exhumation. Throughout the 1990s, my other collections took form in Chairman Mao Enshrined (1990), a collection of Mao badges I received from corresponding with Red China starting in 1971, and The Richard Nixon Museum (1991), a mock museum of thousands of Nixon political collectibles, motivated by the opening of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. In 1992, I went to Italy to research the Shroud of Turin. On the Holy Shroud I found four inexplicable images left by scorch marks from an unfortunate fire in 1523. I interpreted these marks as sinister clown faces or portraits of devils. It was as if the Devil tried to burn the Shroud but failed, leaving only his diabolically mocking self-portraits. Additionally, in the bloodstain made by the wound from the Holy Lance, I found a prophetic portrait of George Washington that bears a striking resemblance to the well-known bust by the French master portrait sculptor, Jean-Antonie Houdon. From Turin, I traveled to Vienna, to the Schatzkammer of the Hofburg Palace, where I did research on and constructed artworks in the form of six third-class relics — three of the Holy Lance and three of the Veil of Veronica. In 1993, I did a performance called Crawling Up the Holy Stairs, at the Scala Sancta, in Rome’s Sancta Sanctorum. The Scala Sancta are the relic steps of the Palace of Pontius Pilot — the stairs upon which Christ walked on the way to his crucifixion.The saintly Pope Leo IV

fig. 19 souvenir artist’s clothing

(reigning from 847 to 855) granted an indulgence of five fewer years in Purgatory for each of the 28 steps of the Holy Stairs. Pilgrims are allowed to crawl up the stairs on their knees (viewing blood stains from Jesus along the way) as they pray the Lord’s Prayer on each step. In this performance, I reenacted the crawl of Martin Luther in 1511, an act which led him to doubt the sacredness of relics. By the time Luther reached the top step, he had lost his faith in relics — thus igniting the fuse of the Reformation. In 1994, I did another crawling performance called Crawling to the Virgin in which I crawled on my knees across Guadalupe Plaza in Mexico City, collecting relics (souvenirs) along the path that leads to the miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. For more than 15 years I have been collecting reliquarial boxes for my project, keeping them in deep storage until the right moment

fig. 20 Chairman Mao Enshrined

presented itself. During that period, I traveled — from Turin to Vienna, from Las Vegas to Lapland, from Polynesia to the Vatican, and from the Iceland to Tasmania and elsewhere, collecting artifacts along the way. In the summer of 2002 — after ten years of traveling around the world and making residences in Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas, Nevada; Swedish Lapland; and San Antonio, Texas — I drove west from the Texas Hill Country, across the infernal desert, to settle back in Los Angeles. At that point, I consolidated four storage spaces and various shipments from Vegas, Sweden, Texas, and California into one gargantuan jam-packed storehouse. All the research materials, relics, artifacts, books, and tchotchkes from my travels were brought together for the first time. I had to sort through all the different containers, seeing anew all the artifacts. This was the moment that inspired me to start the reliquary project that I had been planning for so long. In 2003, I began. I worked full-time for more than three years constructing the reliquaries. In 2004, I took a short detour from the reliquaries and brought together the world’s first art-world exhibition of Thomas Kinkade’s original paintings, at California State University Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. The exhibition comprised several installations of heaps upon heaps of Kinkade trademark collectibles. Included in the exhibition was a relic from 9/11 — a scorched Thomas Kinkade Daily Calendar that had somehow miraculously survived the disaster.

fig. 21 Scala Sancta

In this reliquary project, I intend no sacrilege toward relics; I am using the convention of reliquaries as a conceptual framing device to

produce a kind of autobiography rendered in personal artifacts. My process of relic accumulation is a lifelong project, with some relics generated intentionally and some accidentally, and it will continue long after the end of this specific project. In 1832, Jeremy Bentham wrote Auto-Icon: Further Uses for the Dead to the Living, proposing that “every man be his own statue.” Bentham championed the idea that instead of being buried, everyone should become their own “auto-icon” after death, by having our bodies mummified and put on display — thus, there would be no need for portraits or statues. As requested in his will, Jeremy Bentham’s preserved body was placed in a wooden cabinet and stands on display at University College, London.

fig. 22 Exihibiton of Thomas Kinkade’s origianl paintings

Lutheran Relics

s a child in Lutheran School, I quickly learned how Protestant leader Martin Luther felt about relics. Luther openly mocked them,

believing that the veneration of relics was like practicing idolatry. And I, always being contrary, was then of course greatly attracted to relics. To me, they were the forbidden fruit, as well as representatives of everything popish and un-Lutheran. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. It was no coincidence that Luther chose October 31 — Halloween, the eve before All Saints Day — for that was the day upon which the Castle Church displayed its over 19,000 relics from the collection of Fredrick the Wise (1463-1525). All Saints Day is the feast day on which the relics of the saints are venerated. Luther’s neighbor and friend, artist Lucas Cranach, made woodcuts of all the relics in the treasury of the

fig. 23 Martin Luther

Castle Church, which were printed in Das Wittenberger Heiltumbuch, a book which served as a catalog of the reliquaries. (Luther later commissioned Cranach to produce prints depicting, for example, Catholic curia coming out of the Devil’s posterior.) The Wittenberg collection included reliquaries containing a Thorn from Jesus’ Crown of Thorns, a Twig of the Burning Bush, Soot from the Fiery Furnace, the Gifts of the Magi, Milk from the Virgin Mary, a section of the Holy Crib, and Straw from the Manger. The pontiff in Rome specified precisely how much benefit could be gained by viewing each relic. Pilgrims viewing the entire collection would receive indulgences for a reduction of time in Purgatory equaling 1,902,202 years and 270 days. The Great Reformer was outraged by the decree of Pope Leo X (1475–1521), which authorized the practice of selling special jubilee indulgences or certificates guaranteeing the bearer forgiveness of all sins and the relinquishing of temporal and eternal punishment in hell. Luther believed that the indulgences went too far in absolving sin. He wrote in his Ninety-five Theses that it was madness to believe that indulgences “could absolve a man even if he had done the impossible and had violated the mother of God.” The Church was selling these indulgences to fund the construction of the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica — built upon the relics of St. Peter, to hold in its great pillars

fig. 24 Woodcut of a relic in the treasury.

the relics of the True Cross, the Holy Lance, the Veil of Veronica, and the Skull of St. Andrew. Dr. Luther strongly disapproved of what he called the worship of relics. But the Church approved of and encouraged relic veneration by pilgrims who would pay a fee to do so, and who would be issued a document (or indulgence) certifying reduction of time suffering in Purgatory for a deceased relative. There was even an indulgence jingle: When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs. According to Lutheran doctrine, salvation is based on faith, not on “works” such as relic veneration. During the Reformation, many holy

fig. 25 St. Peter’s Basilica

relics were ransacked, lost, or destroyed by mobs of rampaging Lutherans. Inspired by the recent Reformation, on May 6, 1527, a band of marauding Lutheran mercenaries ruthlessly sacked Rome. The churches were looted and their holy relics thrown in the dirt and trampled. In England during the Reformation, King Henry VIII commanded that all the “superstitious” reliquaries be dismantled, the relics disposed of, and the gold, silver, jewels and ornaments brought to the Tower of London. Martin Luther would often use jokes to get his message across, saying, “When the devil pesters you, at once seek the company of friends, fig. 26 Sacking of Rome

drink more, joke and jest or engage in some form of merriment.” By the use of comical stories, Luther would mock relics, saying they were for the gullible and superstitious. For example, in Table Talk, Luther said, “What lies there are about relics! One claims to have a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from Moses’ burning bush. And how does it happen that eighteen apostles are buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?” He jested that there were so many alleged nails from the crucifixion, that one could shoe every horse in Germany with them. Luther told an anecdote about five pilgrims who went to Rome. Each was given a holy relic by a priest. Upon returning home, they all unwrapped their relics, neatly bound in silk, to find that each one had received a femur-bone from the ass that Christ sat upon during His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Thereupon discovering, they exclaimed with great wonder, “Lord! That ass had five legs?” But Luther was serious about faith, saying, “Salvation is not earned by pilgrimages to Rome, veneration of relics or masses attended. We need only Jesus Christ.” Luther obviously had a major problem with relics, so it is with a sense of irony that I have included in my project

fig. 27 John Calvin

several reliquaries containing relics from my Lutheran school days. Reformation leader John Calvin also used his powers of wit and irony when he wrote A Treatise on Relics, in which he pointed out what he believed were absurdities concerning relics. With reference to the relic of a broiled fillet of fish that St. Peter gave to Jesus, Calvin wrote that the flesh “must have been thoroughly spiced to have been preserved so long.” Concerning the numerous bottles of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary, Calvin said, “Had the Virgin been a wet-nurse for all her life, she could not have produced more milk than you can see in various parts of the land” — enough to open a dairy. The Reformer thought that the fragile Swaddling Cloths were unlikely to have survived through the ages. He mused that the Crown of Thorns must have been replanted to produce the multitude of thorns shown throughout Europe. As well, he wondered why there were four Holy Lances that claimed to be the one that pierced the side of Jesus. Calvin was particularly harsh on the Shroud of Turin, pointing out that its existence conflicts with the Gospel text, as well as the fact that evangelists therein did not mention the miraculous imprint. He noted that a relic asserted to be the brain of St. Peter turned out to be a lump of pumice, and the arm of St. Anthony was devotedly worshiped until it fell out of its reliquary and was found to be the bone

fig. 28 Shroud of Turin

of a stag. All these holy relics, Calvin asserted, “were inventions for deceiving silly folk.” But upon the relics’ wondrous nature, Calvin stated, “One cannot really tell which is more wonderful, the folly and credulity of those who devoutly receive such mockeries, or the boldness of those who put them forth.” As a child I was raised in the Lutheran Church, and as an adult I work in the contemporary art world. I see no disparity in honoring both traditions (though I am also a heretic). Like Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, I have a dual and divided nature. In my art, I walk the razor’s edge between extremes. Because I am dyslexic, I can hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, while seeing the absurdity of my position and relishing it. Dyslexics appear to be able to provisionally affirm simultaneously several incompatible assertions due to the excess connections and pathways in their brains. I find my rapture in the seemingly impossible unity of opposites.

fig. 29 Carl Jung

The closest terms I can find in relation to my art method are multivalence, antinomy, and cognitive dissonance. The term multivalence means having various subtle meanings or values, as in a multivalent allegory. According to Carl Jung, antinomy is “a totality of inner

opposites.” Antinomy is a contradiction between two statements, both apparently obtained by correct reasoning. According to the Cognitive Dissonance Theory developed by Leon Festinger in 1957, people tend to seek consistency among their beliefs and cognitions. When there is an inconsistency between beliefs, it causes dissonance and occurs most often in situations where an individual must choose between two incompatible beliefs or actions. The greatest dissonance is created when the two alternatives are equally attractive. A person who has intense dissonant cognitions is said to be in a state of dissonance arousal. As a cognitive dissident, I find the tension between incompatible beliefs extremely attractive. Without a doubt, Martin Luther was in an intensely numinous state, between Heaven and Hell, as he battled at once the Church and the Devil. Luther’s Reformation was in direct response to two main events involving relics: Luther’s climb up the Holy Stairs in 1511, and the exhibition of the church relics in Wittenberg on All Saints Day in 1517, at which time he posted his Ninety-five Theses. As I was brought up Lutheran, it’s no wonder that relics and reliquaries came to fascinate me. Surely some Luther-esque mocking has rubbed off on me. However, I am enraptured by reliquaries and seek them out, and I believe that they are among the most beautiful

fig. 8 Leon Festinger

and wondrous art objects created by humankind. Jeffrey Vallance

Los Angeles 2007

fig. 8 The Church and the Devil

Orange grove at Orcutt Ranch Park

Childhood Relics

Baby Spoon 18

(Photograph of the artist as a baby)

Baby Spoon

was part of the postwar baby boom, and like so many infants of the time, I was raised on Gerber baby food. When I was born,

in 1955, Gerber had an ongoing promotional offer: If you saved up enough labels, you could redeem them for a cheap giveaway Gerber spoon engraved with your babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name and birth date. The Gerber Baby logo was drawn by artist Dorothy Hope Smith in 1928, using infant Ann Turner Cook as the model. Cook is now a mystery novelist who writes about the mother-child bond, setting her stories among the rivers, lakes, and small historic towns near her home in Tampa, Florida.

Childhood Relics

Christmas Bell

n the late 1950s on Christmas Eves, my father would climb up onto the roof of our house and jingle a

little bell. I would hear the bell and run outside to look for Santa Claus and find, instead, a pile of presents on the front porch. In the late 1960s the bell came into my possession, and I would sneak it into Trinity Lutheran Junior High School. As a prank, I would conceal the bell somewhere in my clothes or under a table and ring it. I would observe the teachers and students looking around trying to find the source of the sound. On the last day of school, before the summer of ’68, I was caught, and my teacher, Mr. A.H. Stellhorn, confiscated the bell. During summer breaks, Mr. Stellhorn often took vacations in Europe, which he would document with slides that he would later show to his classes.That summer, he traveled throughout East Germany. On the first day of school the next fall, Mr. Stellhorn came to see me. With a twinkle in his eye, he handed the bell back to me. I’d thought that I’d never see it again. He told me that he had inadvertently left my bell in his briefcase and carried it with him on his travels behind the Iron Curtain.

Christmas Bell Childhood Relics

Backyard Excavation, Canoga Park, CA, 1958 – 1981

etween the ages of about 4 and 8 years old, like many young boys

I was fascinated by dinosaurs. I would play for hours in the backyard with plastic dinosaurs, creating complex dioramas — miniature ponds, streams, waterfalls, caves, and rock formations landscaped with live plants. With rocks I would construct long caves that were planted on top with succulents. I would run hose water through the underground river to the grotto that would empty into a small pond. Over time, real frogs and dragonflies were attracted to the pond.The whole scene was inhabited by carefully placed plastic prehistoric animals, cave men and other creatures — I still clearly remember the toy stores where I bought the figurines, and the racks where the packages hung on display. In the early 1980s, I moved back into my childhood home in Canoga Park, California. While I was working in the garden, I accidentally excavated plastic dinosaurs and animals — relics from my childhood, waiting there 20 years for me to find.

1971 Sylmar Earthquake Casualty n the early 1960s, Grandma and Grandpa Vallance lived in a trailer park in Orange, California. Grandpa George played the

bagpipes and enjoyed bowling-on-the-green. Grandma Nina was a fortuneteller who wore a turban, had a crystal ball and read tea leaves. I remember that their mobile home — a 1958 Angel CCH model, class BS, type 42-T trailer — was filled with huge black-lacquered Chinese furniture. Next to the trailer, they had dug a fishpond. On the rocks around the pond, like a diorama, stood groupings of miniature oriental figures. I was enthralled by these and spent hours looking at them. Later, when my grandparents moved out of the trailer park, I got to keep one of the figurines: a ceramic Chinese man. I kept it on a shelf in my bedroom museum. On February 9, 1971, at 6:01 a.m., a 6.6 earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley, where I lived. Sixty-five people lost their lives. The Olive View Hospital in Sylmar collapsed. The Van Norman Dam threatened to burst. A massive freeway overpass came crashing down. But the only object of mine that broke in the quake was the ceramic Chinese man. I glued him back together with Elmer’s white glue. The hairline fractures are barely visible.

Childhood Relics

Morticiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Madonna 24

Morticiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Madonna

n 1964 I was enraptured by The Addams Family television show. I collected all kinds of Addams Family memorabilia and

constructed an elaborate cardboard replica of the Addams Family house. I wrote a letter to the creator of the original Addams Family, New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams. I sent him a photo of the cardboard house and he sent me a letter with a drawing of Wednesday Addams in reply. There were two series of Addams Family bubblegum cards, and I tried to collect them all.The backs of one series of cards were sections of an Addams Family portrait â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a simple puzzle that one could complete by collecting all the cards in the set. The back of the other series formed a puzzle-drawing of the Addams Family house. Enshrined in this icon-like reliquary is a card featuring Morticia Addams, my favorite Addams Family character. She formed my earliest notions of feminine beauty.

Childhood Relics

Orange Crush

ne night during the summer of 1966, our family went to the Canoga Park Drive-in Theater to watch Fantastic Voyage. My

stepfather brought along bottles of Orange Crush soda. He did not explain why, but instead of a bottle opener he had brought along a pair of pliers to open the bottles. At a certain point during the movie, he said that he would open everyone’s bottles with the pliers. But for some reason, I didn’t want my drink just yet. Later, when I got thirsty, my stepfather refused to open the Orange Crush for me. Instead he handed me the bottle and the pliers. I tried in vain to open the bottle — after about 15 minutes I managed only to shake it up, real good. At last, in one violent cataclysm, the bottleneck exploded, sending sharp shards of glass and sticky orange soda pop all over the seats, the ceiling, the windows and the rest of the family. Boy, was I in trouble now! And still thirsty. I was so horrified that I saved the fateful Orange Crush’s broken bottleneck, with the scraped-up cap still attached. The bottleneck fragment now rests on a purple pillow in a reliquary lined with orange crushed velvet.

Orange Crush Childhood Relics

Environmental Orange 28

Environmental Orange

n 1971, near my childhood home in Canoga Park, there was a wonderful place called Orcutt Ranch Park. The park consisted

of an old ranch house surrounded by orange groves, like those that once covered a large area of the San Fernando Valley. Along the southwest border of the ranch, there was an idyllic little stream called Dayton Creek, shaded by ancient oak and eucalyptus trees. As a child I, would play at the stream, fascinated by the bugs and tadpoles. In the summer of 1971, I was appalled to read that the Los Angeles County Flood Control District was planning to cut down all the trees and fill the stream with cement. I immediately wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, the Valley Green Sheet, and then pulled out all the fluorescent-orange survey markers that the County had put in place. Because of my efforts, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;Save the Streamâ&#x20AC;? group formed that eventually led to the preservation of the stream and trees. This was my first environmental-activism success! Preserved in this reliquary is a desiccated orange from the orange grove at Orcutt Ranch that I found at the time.

Childhood Relics

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Pop Relics

Artificial Barnacle from Neptuneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kingdom 32

Artificial Barnacle from Neptuneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kingdom

s a child, my favorite amusement park in Southern California was P.O.P. (Pacific Ocean Park), built on a wooden pier over the

ocean in Santa Monica. I had a particular affinity for P.O.P on account of the nautical and underwater themes. My favorite attraction was Neptuneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kingdom, which featured an immense underwater diorama with fake fish that swam around on wires connected to a track. Splendid artificial turtles, manta rays, and sharks glided over coral reefs and hanging seaweed. P.O.P. was closed in 1967, and by the early 1970s it was in disrepair and eventually abandoned. In 1973, I snuck into the derelict park and explored the disintegrating rides. From the Neptuneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kingdom attraction I wrenched an artificial barnacle as a relic of my favorite ride. P.O.P. was finally demolished in 1974.

Pop Relics

Roller Derby Relic: Padlock Hasp from Olympic Auditorium

urely one of the most outstanding landmarks in Los

Angeles is the majestic Olympic Auditorium. It is renowned for hosting many fine sporting events, including wrestling and roller derby. A friend of mine from my Trinity Lutheran Junior High School days, Mark Damato (or Marc Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Amato), was a member of the Thunderbirds roller derby team. In the early 1970s, I often went with him to the Olympic Auditorium. One time when I was standing in line out front, I noticed that the hasp for the padlock on one of the main doors was loose. I took out a dime from my pocket and loosened the rest of the screws, so I could keep the padlock hasp as a relic of the event. Recently, Mark Damato died of brain cancer. He was given a special Roller Derby tribute.

Roller Derby Relic: Padlock Hasp from Olympic Auditorium Pop Relics

Seymour Relics (Relic of the Slimy Wall)

From left to right: Mark D’Amato,Torry “Morch” DeLucia, Larry “Seymore”Vincent and Jeffrey Vallance, 1973

Seymour Relics (Relic of the Slimy Wall)

rom 1971 to 1975, actor Larry Vincent played “Seymour,” host of Fright Night, a local horror show on KHJ-TV in L.A. As the

Master of the Macabre, Seymour made guest appearances at theaters all around the L.A. area. One time some friends and I went to go see Seymour at a local theater. My friend Torry “Morch” DeLucia drove his 1938 Packard to the show, and when Seymour saw the car, he jumped on the running boards to greet his fans. Seymour liked the Packard so much that he asked us if he could use it at all of his appearances. After that we drove him to his guest appearances and went to all the tapings of Fright Night. Larry Vincent later died of cancer while still hosting Fright Night. The final episodes were filmed at his hospital bed, in front of his trademark Slimy Wall set. This reliquary includes a plastic leaf from the Slimy Wall, two period hand-painted Seymour buttons, and a card from the Seymour Fan Club, which we hand-printed on an old printing press in the garage.

Pop Relics

Jägermeister: St. Hubert Relics n May of 1997, while getting totally schnockered in the bar at Alpine Village, near Torrance, California, I contemplated the

Jägermeister logo: a stag head with a glowing cross hovering between its antlers. It turns out that this symbol is the emblem for both St. Hubert and St. Eustace, each a saint of hunting. The saints have similar stories. Both went out hunting instead of attending church, and both encountered a mysterious stag with a glowing cross over its antlers. In both cases, the deer spoke aloud, exhorting, “Repent! Believe in Christ or you will burn in Hell.” As part of my continuing research, I would frequently down several shots of Jägermeister from my stag-head shot-glass. I would then sing (actually more like a mix of yodeling and glossolalia) and dance while slapping myself silly — similar to the Schuhplattler, the traditional lederhosen slapping-dance. I got into trouble more than once while performing these intricate maneuvers. The stag-horn shot-glass and other Jägermeister/St. Hubert relics are preserved in a marterl, or alpine shrine-like reliquary.

J채germeister: St. Hubert Relics Pop Relics

Detail of J채germeister Shotglass

Pop Relics

Shag Carpet Relic from Elvis Presley’s Jungle Room, Graceland

s part of my continuing investigation on the Shroud, I learned that Elvis had a keen interest all things spiritual, especially the

Shroud of Turin. I made a pilgrimage to Graceland with my old buddy Scott Farnum. While we were in Elvis’ “Jungle Room,” a piece of fiber, now preserved in this relic, was procured from Elvis’s green shag carpet.

Elvis Presley Concert Scarf, 1969 hile doing research on the Shroud of Turin, I read that Elvis died on the toilet while reading a book on the Holy Shroud.

I knew that during concerts, Elvis would hand out sweat-drenched scarves in his performance to his adoring fans. An assistant would follow Elvis on stage and repeatedly hand Elvis trademark baby-blue scarves (with the King’s signature mechanically printed on them) that he would don for a moment, or he would drape fans’ personal scarves around his neck—just long enough to collect a precious portion of sweat. I saw a correlation between Elvis’ sweaty scarves and the Holy Sweatcloth (or Veronica’s Veil) relic showing the face print of Christ in sweat and blood. The New Testament tells of healing-cloths touched to the living body of St. Paul, just as Elvis distributed his sweat-soaked scarves during performances.

Pop Relics

Blinky Chicken Collage, 1982

Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

The exhumed bones of Blinky the Friendly Hen

Blinky the Friendly Hen

n April 27, 1978, I went to the meat department of

Ralphs supermarket and looked at chickens in plastic bags. I picked out a nice one and named it Blinky. Then I drove to the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery to bury Blinky. I ordered the complete funeral service — a lot, internment, flower vase, blue plastic coffin with pink satin lining, viewing room, and grave marker. Ten years later, I arranged for the remains of Blinky to be exhumed, and hired a lawyer, a doctor, and a scientist to determine the cause of Blinky’s death. Blinky’s bones were sifted through an archeological screen, her remains autopsied and her bones analyzed by a computer. Blinky’s bones were then reburied, except for a few bits that I saved as relics. The major first-class relics of Blinky are preserved in the collection of Barry Sloane, Los Angeles. Here, presented for the first time since the 1988 exhumation, are some bones and bone fragments from Blinky the Friendly Hen.

Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

Blinky Relic 48

Two-headed Blinky Relic

he duality of Blinky the Friendly Hen is shown here in a freak two-headed chicken reliquary. The two sides of fowl are

represented by potent male and female symbology. The mother hen sitting on her eggs is a symbol of maternity. Cute baby chicks are symbols of spring and Easter. The foul terms “chick” and “piece of chicken” are slang words referring to women. On the other hand, the term for a rooster is a “cock,” which refers to the rooster’s beak and scrotum-shaped wattles. Related is the word “pecker,” denoting the pecking action of the beak, also referring to male genitalia. Preserved in this two-headed chicken reliquary is a bone from the performance Exhumation of Blinky.

Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

Crematory Bone (L.A. Pet Cemetery) 50

Crematory Bone (L.A. Pet Cemetery)

n 1978, on the same day that I buried Blinky the Friendly Hen at the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, I inspected some of the other

attractions at the cemetery.The pet crematorium intrigued me. I poked around and while looking at the ominous ovens discovered the frightening grappling hooks used to place the pet carcasses into the fiery furnace. At the base of the furnace was a strange and sad collection of objects, mostly singed pet tags that had been pulled out of the ashes and plastic pet toys that were most likely removed before the animal was incinerated. The pet toys were probably taken out so that the plastic would not burn toxically in the fire. On the odd pile, I found a rubber dog bone

that appeared to have been left out so long out in the sun that it was bleached white.

Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

Blinky Carcass: Relic and Milagros (Performance Relic) 52

Blinky Bone Blinky the Friendly Hen Relics

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Nixon Relics

Nixon’s Button

n May 9, 1962, the Vallance family went on its weekly shopping trip to Food Giant supermarket

in Canoga Park, California. As we pulled up to the market, we saw that there was some commotion in the parking lot, which turned out to be a Nixon for Governor rally. As we shopped, Mr. Nixon’s voice boomed from the loudspeakers outside. After we’d finished shopping and were loading the brown paper bags of groceries into our white station wagon, I begged my parents to let me run over to grab a Nixon button. (I had just started collecting political buttons.) There was Richard Milhous Nixon,

seated on a folding chair behind a card table decorated in red, white, and blue crepe paper. I was a little irritated as there was a line of people. When I finally got up to the front of the line, I asked, “May I please have a button?” The Nixon button is now enshrined in this small gilded reliquary.

Souvenir from the Nixon Museum (Scrimshaw Bone)

n February 9, 1991, I opened up my own Nixon Museum. Since then,

versions of the museum have been touring continuously throughout the U.S. and abroad. I believe my museum is more democratic than the real Nixon Library, as mine includes caricature cartoons and comical Watergate memorabilia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; everything from Nixon buttons and Nixon books to a Nixon-emblazoned toenail clipper and roach clip. My Nixon Museum also has a gift shop that has sold such things as Nixon Ping-Pong balls, plastic pocket-protectors, potholders, and rubber money-purses. Here is a one-of-a-kind Nixon Museum souvenir: a bone with a scrimshaw caricature of Tricky Dick â&#x20AC;&#x201D; my Nixon Museum logo.

Nixon Relics

Flowers From Nixonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Funeral 58

Flowers From Nixon’s Funeral ichard Nixon died on April 22, 1994. His public funeral was held on April 26 at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace

in Yorba Linda, California. I drove down and waited for hours in a mile-long line to see the flag-draped coffin of Richard Nixon. I was disappointed that it was not an open-casket ceremony, as I wanted to see one last time the face that I had so often caricatured. No fucking luck! The terrazzo-tiled library lobby was filled with flowers from politicians and heads of state of every persuasion. After the funeral, the Nixon Library crushed up the flowers and offered them in plastic bags. Here is an assortment of flowers from Nixon’s funeral presented as a memento mori in a melted-looking black cathedral-shaped reliquary, with a replica of Nixon in a coffin enshrined behind vaulted arches. The Gothic cathedral-shaped shrine is comparable to a feretory container, which is a reliquary in the form of a coffin or sarcophagus. The day after Nixon’s public funeral, Nixon’s official state funeral was attended by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. By strange coincidence, that date — April 27 — is also the anniversary of Blinky the Friendly Hen’s funeral.

Nixon Relics

Nixon Spirit House

s described in the book The Haunting of the Presidents by Joel Martin and William J. Birnes, psychic Dorothy Maksym has

determined that since Nixon’s death, his spirit works through me. While I was an official researcher at the Richard Nixon Library, working on my book My Life with Dick, I witnessed various ghostly phenomena at the presidential facility. I wrote the first published account of the ghost of Nixon. In The Haunting of the Presidents, the spirit of Nixon, as channeled through Maksym, reveals that he is now supernaturally working through the writer/researcher who wrote the ghost story. The description of the writer could be none other than myself. The details are almost all on target:

“His spirit is working through a much younger man who is now in his late forties and was very dedicated to him and looked upon Richard Nixon as a martyr. . . . Whoever saw Nixon’s spirit must have been open to his energy. . . . An investigator or researcher was delving into his political career. At the time, it was someone who was actually writing something quite positive. Nixon made his presence felt, hoping to be able to put into the mind of the writer, through telepathy, favorable ideas about himself that he wants to get across to the public. “The researcher found the ideas, ‘just flowing like magic,’ he says. But the researcher never knew that the origin of the ideas he thought were his own were actually being communicated by Nixon’s spirit.The writer just thought he was having a lucky day.The man would pick up a book, open to the right page, and just keep going. Actually Richard Nixon’s ghost was guiding him, but he didn’t know it. “He really looked up to Nixon. He’s tall . . . with sandy blond hair.This individual began as a volunteer when he was quite young. . . . But this person does not know that Nixon is working through him psychically. This person admired Nixon so much that he is open to Nixon’s psychic energies and thoughts, which have been able to come through to him. . . . The man has written articles about Nixon. . . . It’s an obsession. . . .This man actually has many of Nixon’s possessions, such as his books and even some of his clothing.This individual is a collector. He reads President Nixon’s books. “Nixon won’t give me the man’s name. . . . If Nixon gives his name and it becomes known, President Nixon feels it would call attention to the man and interfere with what he’s doing to help restore Nixon’s name and reputation. Also, this man does not know Nixon’s spirit is working through him. He would be shocked to see and hear his name coming from a psychic.”

—The Haunting of the Presidents, pages 372 – 378

The spirit of Nixon was correct in describing me as in my late 40s with sandy blond hair. When I was young, I volunteered at a variety of political campaigns. I was a researcher at the Richard Nixon Library when I wrote my book about Nixon. It was true that when I was researching, books would just open up to the right page and ideas flowed like magic. I am indeed obsessed with Nixon. I have collected hundreds of Nixon artifacts (including books and clothing) that I use in a traveling art installation called The Richard Nixon Museum. When I penned the original ghost story, I thought I was perpetrating a prank, but I was shocked when I learned that the channeled spirit of Nixon not only confirmed my story but also described me in detail as the author. Now I have serious second thoughts! When I described the situation to friends of mine who are spiritualists, they said that perhaps I had actually picked up real psychic vibrations from the spirit and had not realized it. Could it be the reason I believed I was writing a sham story was that the spirit of Nixon was working though me and I didn’t know it? According to tradition, the people of Thailand often place a spirit house (san phra phum) shaped like a small temple in front of their houses or beside a fence or wall, so that good spirits will inhabit it and keep evil spirits away from their homes. I continue to have dreams in which the ghost of Nixon tries to get into my house. I’ve heard that spirits are often attracted to their own likenesses, so I placed a Watergate-era folk carving of Richard Nixon in a spirit house, to capture and contain his spirit.

Nixon Spirit House Nixon Relics

Prophetic Nixon Bubble Gum

he ex–head-of-state’s head is seen in perennial comebacks. People see in nature what they want to see,

when and where they want to see it.The profile of Abraham Lincoln, for instance, has been spotted on various cliffs throughout the United States. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the face of the beloved president

was found in a lava flow at Black Gorge on the island of Maui, Hawaii. And ever since Richard Nixon’s funeral, stories of miraculous images of the dead head of state have been popping up around the world—on cliffs in Crete and Sweden, on a beach in Polynesia, on the holy relic of Guadalupe in Mexico City, in a whale’s earbone, and on an eggplant in a supermarket in Los Angeles. I wonder if one day people will start seeing spontaneous faces of George W. Bush; I think not. Nature has an easier time duplicating Nixon’s biomorphic features, It is widely documented that Nixon images appear with greater frequency than any other U.S. president on a large variety of organic surfaces. I have made it my work to collect simulacra of Nixon found on various cliffs, rocks, coral, bone, stains, religious artifacts and vegetables. A comprehensive list of Nixon simulacra can be found in my book, My Life With Dick, published by Bükamerica. This entry into the spontaneous world of Nixon comes from a Mr. Mike Fees: In 1972, Mr. Fees was traveling on a night train behind the old Iron Curtain in what was East Germany. At a checkpoint in the middle of the night, stern Russian guards burst into Mr. Fees’ train compartment, prompting him to spit out the pink wad of gum he was chewing. To his surprise, the gum wad looked surprisingly like the head of then-president Nixon.“I will spew thee out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:17) Mr. Fees, now a Las Vegas resident, believes that the anomalous event may have been a prophetic omen foreshadowing the toppling of the Berlin Wall.

Nixon/Washington Collage

Nixon Relics

Luthern Buttons

Lutheran Relics

Vallance Family Lutheran Catechism 66

Dressed as an angel for an Easter passion play,Vallance accidentally receives heavenly light in the form of lens flare.

Vallance Family Lutheran Catechism

rom childhood, I was raised in the Lutheran Church. My grandparents on my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

side were Norwegian Lutheran immigrants. Every Sunday I went to church and afterward to Sunday school. I even went to Lutheran elementary school and junior high school. I was an acolyte (similar to an altar boy) and was president of the Lutheran Youth Group. I took part in church skits and passion plays (once playing an angel). Later, in my 20s, I was in the church choir, where I sang a solo that one of the church ladies said made her cry. Encased in a church-shaped reliquary is the old Vallance Family Lutheran Catechism.

Lutheran Relics

Lutheran Catechism (My Sacred Scripture) came across a beautiful Islamic book reliquary originally designed to carry a copy of the

Koran. I thought it would be perfect to carry a copy of what I consider my holy book: Martin Lutherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Small Catechism. Enshrined within is one of my Lutheran catechisms. This one has text in both English and German. In Lutheran school, I had to memorize Lutheran prayers and creeds in German. I brought this particular catechism with me when I moved to Las Vegas. I have lutheranized the Muslim reliquary with the addition of the elegant Lutheran Rose symbol. Since this book-reliquary was originally made to carry a sanctified text, I thought it fitting to place within its holy chamber a book that is sacred to my tradition.

Vallance at his confirmation, Canoga Park Lutheran Church

Lutheran Relics

My Sacred Text: Ninety-five Theses he sacred text that is at the core of the Lutheran faith is Martin Luther’s Ninety-five

Theses — the document he nailed to the church door on October 31, 1517. Preserved here is a relic of my Lutheran School days: a small pamphlet on the Ninety-five Theses. Mounted on top of the reliquary is a printed portrait of Martin Luther — the kind that the minister would hand out in church on Sunday. On the back of Luther’s portrait there is a place where church members can write their names and addresses, and sign the bottom of the card, confirming, “I am a Lutheran.”

Holy of Holies: Lutheran Relics

his reliquary houses a collection of the most important primary Lutheran

relics from different periods in my life. These items were gathered over the years in Lutheran church, Sunday school, parochial schools, church camp and other Lutheran events and activities.The relics include a Lutheran cross, a Martin Luther button, Lutheran Rose pins and an â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am a Lutheranâ&#x20AC;? pendant. Because these are the holy of holies of Lutheran relics, they are placed in a sacred antique Buddhist reliquary featuring a series of praying sacred figures.

Lutheran Relics

Installation views of the Virgin of Guadalupe wax figure

Christian Relics

Holy Shroud of Turin Image Touched to the True Cross 74

Holy Shroud of Turin Image Touched to the True Cross

spent the summer of 1992 living in a medieval castle in Turin, Italy,

doing research on the Shroud of Turin. I found four sinister clown faces on stains on the Shroud. I also found a portrait of President George Washington in the blood flow on the Shroud, caused by the wound inflicted by the Holy Lance being thrust into the side of Christ. This image of the Shroud of Turin is a third-class relic, as it has been touched to a first-class relic, the True Cross.

Christian Relics

Instruments of the Passion

he most typical style of shrine is built to house relics from the Passion of Christ. The relics most often displayed include a piece

of the True Cross, the three Nails from the Crucifixion, the Holy Lance, the Skull o f Adam (found while excavating the post-hole for the cross), the Holy Dice (or lots cast at the foot of the cross), the Holy Sponge (dipped in vinegar and gall and offered to quench the thirst of Our Lord), and the Veil of Veronica with the Holy Face of Jesus. In gratitude of a miracle, the faithful often affix Catholic medals, or milagros, to shrines. These Instruments of the Passion are third-class relics: they are replicas that have been touched to other first- or second-class relics. In this case, the relics have been anointed with Holy Oil from the Church of the Holy Manger in Bethlehem.

Crawling To The Virgin hile working on my Shroud of Turin project, I heard about some interesting research going on, concerning the image of the

Virgin of Guadalupe. Researchers were looking into photographic enlargements of the eyes of the Virgin to find reflected images of many figures from Mexican history. I wanted to see the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe firsthand, so with my friend, artist Cameron Jamie, I headed down to Guadalupe Basilica, in Mexico City. At Guadalupe Plaza, I witnessed pilgrims in the ritual act of crawling on their knees across the pavement to receive special favor from the Virgin. Cameron and I got down on our knees and crawled across the plaza. We both received some nasty blisters; this was seen as a good omen. In the performance photo, Cameron and I hold bags of Guadalupe souvenirs collected along the way.

Christian Relics

The Severed Fingers of Reverend Acres 80

The Severed Fingers of Reverend Acres n 2000, artist Reverend Ethan Acres traveled to Umeå, Sweden to make use of the sculpture facilities at the Konsthögskolan

(Academy of Fine Arts) at Umeå University, where I was teaching. Rev. Acres was working on the second piece in his Highway Chapel series. Holy Roller: Highway Chapel II was made out of an old Scandinavian trailer and was being customized to look like a quaint Swedish cottage. The Holy Roller featured church spires, a shingle roof, stained glass, dangling icicles, a chicken-shaped weathervane, a brass devil, a portrait of Jesus, and a metal baptismal font. As the Reverend was using the drill press to bore a hole in the bottom of the font, the drill bit jammed, turning the font into a whirling jagged blade.The spinning metal almost completely severed two of his fingers; his blessed index finger hung by a flap of skin. The Reverend was rushed to the university hospital, where surgeons (with an ineffective local anesthetic) successfully reattached both fingers. (They remain attached to this day.) I see Rev. Acres’ terrible accident as more of a sacred sacrifice, as an imitation of Christ. The baptismal font was covered in his precious blood — reminiscent of the holy blood of Jesus that washes away the sins of the world.“Jesus Christ . . . washed us from our sins in his own blood.” (Rev. 1:5.) Catholic reliquaries often feature the severed fingers of saints, such as St. Thomas, or the instruments of their torture and martyrdom. I reverently saved the jagged metal baptismal font spattered with the precious blood of saintly Reverend Ethan Acres.

Christian Relics

Kinkade and Vallance in Ivy Cottage studio

Bible Blessed by Thomas Kinkade (from the Kinkade Chapel) n 2004 I curated the first art world exhibition of the work of Thomas Kinkade, the Painter

of Light™. Besides showing the originals of his most famous paintings, I created installations with thousands of collectible items emblazoned with Thomas Kinkade’s trademark imagery. There was a Kinkade living room, dining room, bedroom, libraries, a Christmas scene with a 12-foot Christmas tree, theater, the Bridge of Faith, cases upon cases of kitsch Kinkade collectibles, model villages, blueprints and photos of the Kinkade housing tract, a Kinkade credit card on a velvet pillow, and a Kinkade chapel complete with an altar, pulpit, pews, nativity scene and Kinkade’s Christian paintings and products. On the altar were Kinkade Bibles and religious books. After the show, Thom invited me to his studio, dubbed the Ivy Cottage. I brought along the Kinkade Bibles so he could bless them. The inscription in the family Bible reads thusly: “To Jeffrey: [drawing of a streetlamp] God Bless, Thomas Kinkade”

George Washington Life Mask by Jean-Antoine Houdon hen the Roman centurion thrust the Holy Lance into the side of the crucified Christ, there flowed forth a mixture of blood

and water. When the dead Christ was wrapped in the Shroud of Turin, the blood flow was transferred to the burial cloth. The flow of blood coagulated into a stain resembling an image of George Washington comparable to the image most widely recognized as the best image of Washington — the life-mask cast by French artist Jean Antoine Houdon in 1785. In 1992, for my research, I obtained a casting of the famous Houdon life mask of America’s first president. The Washington image found on the Shroud is like a prophecy of the founding of America: God’s Holy Nation.

Christian Relics

George Washington Stain

Christian Relics

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Vatican Relics

Fragment of the Vatican 88

Audience With The Pope

rom 1999–2001, my wife, Victoria Reynolds, and I were living in subarctic

Sweden and teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts (Konsthögskolan) at Umeå University, near Lapland. Like other residents of the North, we dreamed of holidays in the sun. One very cold day, Vicky said, “Why don’t we arrange a school field trip to Rome?” We thought if we could arrange an audience with the Pope for the students, surely the university would pay for the trip.Through a series of letters to the Vatican, I arranged for a papal audience with John Paul II to take place on October 31, 2001. Over the years I had sent the Pope various gifts and artwork. For this project I suggested that each student bring a special gift to present to the Pope. I also found out from the Vatican about the special rules governing the blessing of objects by the Holy Father. By the time I arrived at Vatican Square, I had several bags full of artifacts to get blessed, including a series of gaudy crucifixes that I wore while living in Las Vegas, a bust of the Pope, flags, pins, rings, devotional objects and a blank tablet of drawing paper. As I approached the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican guards with metal detectors looked through my bags. They laughed when they saw all the stuff I brought to have blessed. Possibly because we were an international school group, we got seated about as close as anyone could get to the pontiff without being a bishop or a cardinal.When the moment came for the blessing of the objects, I held the bags high to receive the benediction.

Vatican Relics

Statue Blessed by Pope John Paul II and Drive-by Yassir Arafat 90

Statue Blessed by Pope John Paul II and Drive-by Yassir Arafat

efore my audience with Pope John Paul II, I went to a little cafe right on the main

drag to the Vatican. While I was having an espresso, a fleet of big black limousines barreled down the avenue. Someone said, “Look — it’s Arafat!” I finished my coffee and had a freshly baked Italian pastry, and after a few minutes I saw the same limos coming back in the opposite direction. I knew it was Arafat, so I stepped off the curb and waved vigorously. Yasser Arafat, in his Palestinian headdress, waved back. Next to him were his bodyguards in dark suits and shades, who laughed while holding their quivering automatic weapons. Right after Arafat drove by, I stepped into a model store next door and saw in the window a little statue of Arafat, one that real Arafat had just driven past. I bought the Arafat figurine.Then my students and I went to have our audience with Pope John Paul II, where the Holy Father blessed a statuette of himself. Arafat was in Rome to have a meeting with the Pope (just prior to our own audience), to talk with His Holiness about recent developments in Palestine. Arafat gave the Pope a delicious cake shaped like Bethlehem. This reliquary preserves the one random moment in time when Pope John Paul II,Yasser Arafat, and Jeffrey Vallance all converged.

Vatican Relics

Vatican Tiki ach time I’ve visited the Vatican, I’ve made a pilgrimage to the Vatican Gift Shop right next to St. Peter’s Basilica. On one of these

trips, I was admiring the gift shop’s Catholic kitsch when my eyes were drawn to a Tiki carving cradled amongst the rosaries. I could not imagine a more out-of-place thing — a carving of a pagan idol for sale at this most sacred of all Catholic gift shops! I recalled the history of missionaries to Polynesia: When missionaries came upon a new island, one of the first pious acts they would do was pile up all the Tiki carvings and burn them. And now I find a pagan Tiki idol for sale at the Vatican — that certainly represents a change of attitude. I asked the nun at the counter why they were selling a Tiki at the Vatican, and she said, “It’s a craft from the missions.” So first the missionaries burned all the Tikis of the native people, then later they encouraged the natives to carve them again, now as souvenirs of the Vatican. The concept was so absurd that I had to have one.

Vegas Crucifixes Blessed by Pope John Paul II

ike Liberace, while I was living in Las Vegas (between 1994 and

1999), I took to wearing gaudy Vegas lounge jewelry, including medallions and large rings. I also collected and wore Vegas-style jeweled crucifixes. In 2001, when I had my audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, I thought it fitting to have the Vegas crucifixes blessed by the Holy Father. His Holiness John Paul II is now on the fast track to becoming a saint â&#x20AC;&#x201D; possibly making these objects even more holy.

Vatican Relics

The King of Tonga and Jesus (found Tongan poster)

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

Coral in the Shape of Connie Chung 96

Coral in the Shape of Connie Chung

tarting in the late 1970s, I followed the career of television anchorwoman Connie Chung.

For several years, Chung and I corresponded, and I made several drawings and paintings of her. In 1985 and â&#x20AC;&#x2122;86, I traveled throughout the South Pacific. One of my favorite Polynesian pastimes was walking along the beach, casually searching for pieces of coral that resemble various things â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I never knew what shape I might find next. On the island of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, I found a piece of coral in the shape of Connie Chung. With my Sharpie pen, I quickly drew in the details.

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

Coral in the Shape of Tiki n 1986, I visited the island of Rangiroa, in French Polynesiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tuamotu Archipelago. I went to Rangiroa atoll because it has

one of the largest lagoons in the world and hence an abundance of sea life. It also has the distinction of being the most shark-infested lagoon in Polynesia. While I was there on the atoll, a devastating hurricane passed close by. After the winds and waves calmed down, I went to the beach. I found a Tiki-shaped fragment of coral that had washed ashore. I pulled out my Sharpie pen and drew in the details.

Coral in the Shape of Tiki Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

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Two Audiences with the King of Tonga

hile traveling throughout the South Seas, I often heard wild stories about the fairytale-

like Kingdom of Tonga, where a huge king, the last reigning monarch of Polynesia, lived in a tiny gingerbread palace. So I set my course for Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, the Friendly Islands. His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga was fascinating for a number of reasons: Not only was he one of the last kings in Polynesia (all other island groups having been colonized by foreign powers), but he established a Guinness World’s Record as the World’s Fattest King, tipping the scales at 462 pounds. And, he surfed! He’d had a special surfboard made in Hawaii to accommodate his unusual physical requirements. I made two trips to Tonga to have audiences with the King — the first in 1985 and the second in 2000.To prepare for my first trip, I asked the mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, to write me a letter of introduction. The mayor did better than that — he gave me a gold-embossed certificate making me an official ambassador from Los Angeles. I’d heard that the King’s physician had told His Majesty to lose some weight, and had recommended swimming. The only problem was that the King was so large that he had a difficult time navigating in the water. He wanted swim fins, and not just any flippers would do, as he had truly king-sized feet. When I met with the King, I presented him with a pair of the world’s largest swim fins. The King placed his ham-sized hands in the flippers’ orifices and smiled broadly, saying, “Ah, these will fit nicely.” While in Tonga, I did many portraits of the King on tapa cloth, and in woodcarving and scrimshaw. At that time, it was considered tabu to use the King’s image, but on later trips to Tonga, I saw tapa cloth designs that were uncannily similar. In 2000, I returned to Tonga as Professor in International Contemporary Art from Umeå University, near the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland. I brought my students with me — it was a field trip. An audience was arranged with the King, this time with the help of a letter of introduction from Governor Georg Andersson of the District of Västerbotten, Sweden. I instructed the students to each show the King an example of their art and to present him with a special gift. Each student did a performance piece for the King. A student named Janna Holmstedt wore a bright orange UFO-shaped helmet on her head; Frida Oliv was dressed as “Reindeer Girl” in a revealing reindeer/Playboy-bunny outfit, complete with real antlers; Mattias Olofsson came in drag, cross-dressing as a Lapp woman; and so on.The King had never seen such a spectacle. He was highly pleased.We entertained the King like faka’aluma, the ancient Tongan court jesters.When I stepped up to the King, it was like meeting an old friend. His Majesty said that he’d used the flippers so many times that they had worn out. He had in fact lost some weight — 154 pounds. I was glad that I had played a part in him becoming a healthier man. I, on the other hand, had gained weight since my last visit. For my efforts, I was awarded the Tongan royal title of “Honorary Noble.” Sadly as I wrote this text, news reached me that King of Tonga had died. He was 88. As aptly written in the official program for his state funeral, “His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV is with us no more. He has taken the path of his illustrious ancestors. The land is silent and still.”

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

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Tongan Flag: Relic from Audience with the King of Tonga (Performance Relic)

n Tonga in 1985, just prior to my audience with the King, I had a meeting with His Majestyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

private secretary, Mr. Tongilava, to properly prepare me for my meeting with the King. In the secretaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office, I noticed the miniature Tongan flag, encased in resin, which had been carried to the moon by U.S. astronauts. Similarly, I carried with me to the royal audience with the King, a small handmade Tongan flag. I have preserved the flag in a small Tongan hutâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;style reliquary.

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Tonga Ritual Knife (Performance Relic) The date October 31 has always had special meaning for me. Halloween is my favorite holiday. In Lutheran school I learned that it is called Reformation Day — the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. I chose October 31 as the date for my audience with Pope John Paul II in 2001, and for my second audience with the King of Tonga in 2000. On October 31, 1985, I was in Tonga, and to celebrate I went to a raunchy bar down by the docks in Nuku’alofa, to perform the ritual of Halloween. I brought with me a huge pumpkin and a Bowie knife. As I walked into the bar, the proprietor saw the knife tucked into my belt and promptly confiscated it. After some persuasion, I convinced him that I had come there to perform the mysterious ritual of All Hallows’ Eve. Some rough-looking characters playing pool came over, but soon they were smiling and helping collect the pumpkin seeds and rind into an old coconut shell. I carved the humongous orange gourd into the likeness of an ancient Tongan Tiki. For the rest of my Polynesian expedition, I carried the ritual knife with me, cleaning fish, stripping coconuts, etc., and it picked up a nice travel-worn patina.

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

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Royal Tongan Underwear

n my way to the Kingdom of Tonga in 2000, I stopped off at the Yasawa Islands, off Fiji, to

snorkel in the glorious outer reefs. On the day I left Fiji for Tonga to have an audience with the King, there was one hell of a horrible storm. The wind was wailing like banshees, the rain fell in sheets and the sea was awash with white foaming waves. The standard interisland boats all sank in the maelstrom. For a while it seemed like I was not going to make it to Tonga, but then I radioed the main island and arranged for a sturdy modern boat to rescue me. When the shiny white ship arrived, I hurriedly jumped aboard with all my gear. In Fiji I had adopted the habit of wearing black boxer shorts from Vegas for daily attire, hoping that no one would notice that it was underwear. I continued wearing the boxers on the emergency boat, as I did not want to get my long pants wet. But in the hurry to board, the zipper handle was torn from my luggage. I had the choice of opening my bag to retrieve my pants â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with the bag then staying open and the contents surely spilling out in transit â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or keeping the bag secure and wearing only the boxers to Tonga. So as it happened, I made my triumphant return to Tonga to meet the King in my underwear. Preserved in this colonial-style reliquary is the pair of tattered black REPP brand boxer shorts worn on my way to meet the King of Tonga.

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Tongan Coin from Audience with the King of Tonga (Performance Relic) Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

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King of Tonga Soap-On-A-Rope

n October 31, 2000, at the Royal Palace in Tonga, I had my second audience with His Majesty King

Taufa’ahau Tupou IV. There he was, His Magnificence, the King of Tonga, in his Royal Audience Chamber, sitting on his splendid carved wooden throne with the Tonga crest over his head. I stepped up and pulled out a special gift for the King, something found by my friend Cameron Jamie in a thrift shop back in Southern California. It was a green Tiki-shaped soap-on-a-rope with a “Tonga” brand trademark on the back. I was almost too embarrassed to show it to His Majesty. The soap was battered, grubby and chipped. It looked flocked like a Christmas tree, an effect caused by successive layers of dust adhering to the tacky surface. When Cameron first gave it to me, I thought, “He wants me to give this piece of donkey dung to the King?” I considered trying to wash the dirt off, but then it might look used. I even contemplated abandoning the soap somewhere, and lying to Cameron about having given it to the King. But on the day before the audience, in a flash of inspiration, I realized that all it needed was presentation. I went to downtown Nuku’alofa, found a nice gift box with white ribbons, placed the soap-on-a-rope in a Ziploc bag and placed it therein like an artifact. I told the King that the soap-on-a-rope was considered a “collectible.” To my astonishment, His Majesty was quite interested in the Tiki soap. He leaned forward, held up the tiki, and smiled broadly as he inspected the inexplicable artifact. At last the King exclaimed, “I’ve heard about a cologne manufacturer using ‘Tonga’ as a brand name, but this is quite interesting indeed!” I was shocked by the positive reception the soap received from the sovereign. It was strange, I thought, that the King would be intrigued by this most pathetic gift. Then it dawned on me: This was a historic moment. American Polynesian pop culture confronts the Living Embodiment of Tiki! Now it had come full circle: Tonga™ soap-on-a-rope meets the Tongan King himself. Preserved in this coffin-like hand-carved Polynesian box is an authentic vintage Amway Tonga™ Tiki soap-on-a-rope.

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Tongan Royal Palace: Relics from Audience with the King of Tonga

he King of Tonga’s residence is a unique architectural structure. The palace

is modest in size compared to other royal palaces. The building is a whitewashed Victorian affair with a red tin roof. On the TV show Fantasy Island, Ricardo Montalban’s mansion is based on the Tongan Palace. Only in Tonga would the world’s largest king live in a miniature palace! In 2000, while having my second audience with the King of Tonga, I chipped off a piece of the palace’s façade. The piece appears to be a congealed drip of whitewash. I have preserved the particle in a bamboo reliquary surrounded by other royal Tongan artifacts, including a Tongan military hat badge, Tongan police force belt buckle, and a patch with the royal coat-of-arms of Tonga.

Treasure Island: Samoa (Robert Louis Stevenson Relics) n 1985 I traveled to the islands of Samoa in Polynesia. One of my favorite writers, Robert Louis

Stevenson (known in Samoa as Tusitala, meaning “storyteller”), made his home in Western Samoa, and I knew that his house, called Vailima (“five waters”), still stood near Apia, the island’s capital. When I arrived in Apia, I made a pilgrimage to Vailima. I brought along a well-worn copy of Stevenson’s Treasure Island. I walked around the house, which at the time was off-limits to visitors, as it was then the home of the head of state of Western Samoa, His Highness King Tanumafili II. (Later, in the mid1990s, Vailima was turned into the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum.) However, I managed to get inside after convincing the guard that I urgently needed to use the facilities. Refreshed then, with book under arm, I hiked up Mt.Vaea to see Stevenson’s concrete-block grave. The R.L. Stevenson book-reliquary contains the copy of Treasure Island that I brought to Samoa, a postcard of Robert Louis Stevenson’s home at Vailima, a postcard of Stevenson’s grave, a Christmas card showing Stevenson with a Samoan chief (1937), a first-day cover envelope of the 75th anniversary of Stevenson’s death, four R.L.S. commemorative stamps, four R.L.S. Christmas stamps (1985), a first-day cover envelope with commemorative R.L.S. coin (1969), commemorative Stevenson coin (1969), two Samoan coins, a Western Samoa 2-tala banknote featuring King Tanumafili II, an illustration of King Tanumafili II, a print of Stevenson, a Vailima Beer patch, a Samoan Police patch, a small Treasure Island charm, and a signed copy of a story I wrote about my voyage to American Samoa, entitled Diet of Worms: I Joined the Samoan Police Force.

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Contents of Treasure Island: Samoa reliquary

Polynesia and the Kingdom of Tonga Relics

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Map of Switzerland Collage, 1988

World Travel Relics

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Julietâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Balcony, Verona 112

Juliet’s Balcony, Verona “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” —Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

n 1982, I was planning a trip to Europe when an ex-girlfriend found out about it and asked if we could meet in Europe. I

wanted to say no, but I said okay, thinking that she would never show up. But she did arrive, and she wanted to tour the usual romantic destinations of Europe. I wasn’t sure how I should handle sharing a hotel room with my ex while my new girlfriend waited faithfully at home. There were some awkward moments . . . . Somehow we ended up going to Verona, Italy, to the historic site of Juliet’s Balcony (Casa di Giulietta). I felt sad that the façade had been defaced with graffiti; nevertheless, I rubbed the polished right breast of the bronze statue of Juliet Capulet — for good luck. As I rubbed, a man pulled up in a little pushcart full of the worst kind of kitsch Romeo and Juliet souvenirs: postcards, stickers, ashtrays, plates, dolls, etc. For some unaccountable reason, right next to the other souvenirs was a tray of Dead Kennedys punk buttons. (I recognized the “DK” logo.) How in the world? It was so incongruous that I deemed it the perfect souvenir of my “romantic” pilgrimage to Juliet’s Balcony.

World Travel Relics

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Lion of St. Mark: Venice – Las Vegas

hile living in Las Vegas, I became intrigued by the façade

of the Venetian Casino and wrote a story comparing its architecture to the actual buildings in Venice, Italy. At the Venetian Casino I purchased a small cheap brass figurine — probably manufactured in China — of the Winged Lion of St. Mark, the heraldic symbol for Venice. In 1999, I carried this small figurine with me to Venice, Italy, and went on a kind of fool’s errand–performance in search of a Venice souvenir shop that carried the same trinket. Near the entrance to the Venice Biennale, I found a small shop that had the same souvenir. I carried in the Las Vegas version to meet its counterpart. It was a pointless and ridiculous project, but nonetheless I’ve enshrined the St. Mark Lion in a lion-ornamented reliquary.

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Lion of St. Mark: Venice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Las Vegas World Travel Relics

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Relic of the Swedish Royal Palace

henever I visit another country, I turn my attention to the head of state. When

I lived in Sweden from 1999 to 2001, I noted the activities of the royal family. I had an exhibition in the Treasury at the Swedish Royal Palace (Kungliga Slottet) in Stockholm, in which I displayed a set of specially embroidered towels and pillows that I had made for the royal family. I’d found the cheap towels and pillows advertised in a novelty catalog, with the caption “Make your family feel like royalty.” Each item had a little crown on it, and one could have family members’ names embroidered on them. I took the advertisement literally, and ordered a set for the Swedish Royal Family: King Carl XVI Gustav, Queen Silvia, and Crown Princess Victoria. While at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, I saved a flake from the façade of the royal edifice.

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Tasmanian Pencil

n May of 2002, as part of my inclusion in the Sydney Biennale exhibition, I was offered a position as artist-in-residence at the University

of Tasmania in Hobart. I went to the weird antipodal island in search of evidence of the Tasmanian tiger (or thylacine). I was also interested in the myths and legends connected with the real Tasmanian devil and other strange cryptozoological creatures like the Yowie and the Bunyip. Even though the thylacine has been extinct since 1936, scattered sightings are still reported from remote areas in the island’s interior. I did not have an actual sighting of a Tasmanian tiger, but I found images in stains on walls, in peeling paint, and on an array of incredibly absurd promotional and souvenir items. Tasmania’s most unique animal, the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), was hunted to extinction. The thylacine is known by a variety of other names, including the Tasmanian wolf, marsupial wolf, pouched wolf, marsupial dog, zebra dog, zebra opossum, opossum hyena, and colloquially as Tassie or “Tazzy” Tiger. The thylacine held the position of endangered species until 1986, when it was declared officially extinct. The animal has now taken on the distinction of cryptid status, as sightings are still occasionally claimed. The thylacine resembled a large shorthaired dog with a kangaroo-like tail. Its coat was yellowish-brown with stripes on its rump. The creature had the ability to open its articulated jaw like a snake, with the widest gape of any known mammal. A few recent photographs have allegedly been taken of the thylacine, but these are presumed fake. While on my search for the thylacine on a deserted white sand beach, an odd piece of flotsam floated in — a red carpenter’s pencil from who knows where. I didn’t find the elusive thylacine, but I found this pencil.

World Travel Relics

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Detail of Bedroom Museum

Fabulous Vegas Relics

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The Goddess Fortuna: Lady Luck (Gambler’s Shrine)

rom 1994 to 1999, I lived in fabulous Las Vegas. I became interested in an ancient feminine symbol of good luck: the Roman

goddess Fortuna (called Tyche by the Greeks), goddess of good fortune.The ancient goddess is still worshipped in Vegas under the name Lady Luck. I started collecting images of Lady Luck, such as a belt buckle, brooch, an exotic-dancer thong (bikini bottom) and a poker chip. Around Vegas, professional gamblers have built ornate shrines to good fortune, so the Lady Luck relics assembled here are like a gambler’s lucky shrine to Fortuna. The goddess Fortuna wears the headdress of Isis and holds a rudder by which she steers the path of fate. Also included with Fortuna are the Wheel of Fortune and an overflowing cornucopia (horn o’plenty), both emblems of luck and fate.

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The Gods of Vegas by Vallance In 1996, I learned that the most elevated state that a person or place can achieve in Las Vegas is to have oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name written in rhinestones. I started collecting examples of rhinestone name pins of those whom I came to see as the gods ofVegas. Included in this black lacquered reliquary are rhinestone pins of Liberace, Elvis, Nixon, Jesus and the city of Las Vegas itself.To sign the reliquary, I used a special rhinestone signature pin that I had specially crafted while in Vegas.

Fabulous Vegas Relics

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Vegas Showgirl Pasties (Las Vegas, Nevada) hen I first moved to Las Vegas in 1994, to teach at the University of Nevada, I hardly knew anyone in town. The hot Vegas

nights were lonely until I started frequenting the many strip clubs and showgirl reviews. I met a dancer who sidelined as a model in drawing classes at UNLV, which was not uncommon. I squirreled away a pair of her specially handmade showgirl pasties. The beaded pasties are mounted on a carved wooden Black Forest hunting plaque designed to mount boar tusks.

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Las Vegas

Fabulous Vegas Relics

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LBJ Wood Plaque

Texas Relics

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Rock in the Shape of Texas n 2002, my wife and I lived for a time on a longhorn cattle ranch in Boerne, Texas,

called the Majestic Ranch. We were both artists-in-residence at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Shortly after arriving at the ranch, I went for a trek through the scrubby juniper forest, where I came upon a rock simulacrum roughly in the shape of the state of Texas. The shape of Texas is quite distinctive, with its protruding panhandle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; what are the chances of finding a rock shaped anything remotely resembling it? I constructed a reliquary recalling the shape of the nearby Alamo to house the Texas simulacrum.

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Paul Mitchell Road Trip Mousse n August 2002,Vicky and I were leaving San Antonio, moving back to Los Angeles after 10 years on the road.Vicky drove her gold 1983 GMC

Sierra pickup, and I drove my 1971 Pontiac Firebird 350. As we cruised across the baking desert, there was a record heat wave, with temperatures reaching 117ยบF. Neither of our cars had air conditioning, so we drove with our windows open to avoid getting heatstroke. With all the windows open, the air mercilessly whipped our hair into our faces and eyes. We quickly remedied the situation by obtaining a can of Paul Mitchell Extra-Body Sculpting Mousse and plastering the contents onto our heads, sculpting our hair into solid hair-helmets. In this manner we drove in style through the desert. Here, preserved in a Lutheranesque reliquary, is that treasured can of Paul Mitchell mousse.

Texas Relics

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Relic from the LBJ Ranch

hile living on Majestic Ranch in the Texas hill country in 2002, I

visited another ranch in the vicinity: the LBJ Ranch. I had been to President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch once before, in 1968, on a family vacation. In 2002, I made it a pilgrimage project to visit all the local LBJ historical sites — the LBJ Library, Johnson’s birthplace, and the ranch. I collected a few stones from the gravel floor inside LBJ’s cattle barn. I made two matching LBJ reliquaries; one has been donated to the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and is now part of the library’s collection.

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Relic from the LBJ Ranch II (Colleection of Lyndon Baines Johnson Library) Texas Relics

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130

Detail of Vladimir Lenin: Relics of the USSR

Soviet Relics

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USSR Correspondence 132

USSR Correspondence n 1970, I instituted an inte rnational exchange with the Kremlin. I would send American political

collectibles (including Nixon buttons) and kitsch Americana (including a plastic statue of Uncle Sam) to the Communist Party Headquarters in Moscow. An official in the Soviet government replied by sending me Russian badges and flags. In the United States at that time, it was not seen as a patriotic act for an American citizen to exchange objects with Communists. Eventually, my Russian pen pal began sending me bronze busts of the Soviet leaders. That was too much for the FBI â&#x20AC;&#x201D; later I found out, through the Freedom of Information Act, that I had a 12-page FBI file, no doubt on account of my international exchanges.

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Leonid Brezhnev Death Medallion n the mid-1970s, I had a correspondence with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. I mailed him a cardboard cutout of himself in

gold leaf mounted on red velvet. I asked him to autograph the portrait and send it back to me. (Later, when I got my FBI file via the Freedom of Information Act, there was a copy of my letter to Brezhnev inside.) On the rainy morning of November 10, 1982, I went out to my damp studio and, for some inexplicable reason, made a medallion of Leonid Brezhnev in papier machĂŠ on wood. That evening, I heard on the news that Brezhnev had just died. By some kind of strange coincidence Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been working on his portrait at the very moment he passed away. It was like I had a psychic connection to him at the moment of his passing. I mounted the Brezhnev medallion on red velvet, surrounded by Soviet medals.

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Brezhnev Death Medallion Soviet Relics

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Vladimir Lenin: Relics of the USSR 136

Soviet Relics

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138

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Performance Relics

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Bloody Blanket (Performance Relic) 140

Bloody Blanket (Performance Relic) n 1978, sometime soon after I buried Blinky the Friendly Hen at the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, I set out to do another

performance. Often I’d seen roadside stands where people sold stuff like strawberries, nuts, or lobster tails. Approaching by car, a series of signs would let you know that you were getting closer and closer. I thought, what would people do if I had a roadside stand that offered nothing that anyone would want? I gathered together a collection of dried chicken bones, chewed-up corncobs, and dirty rags. I planned to lay the objects on an old blanket, as I had seen people do at swap meets, so I grabbed an old red blanket from the closet. It happened to be my security blanket from childhood. I chose to set up my performance piece, to be called Roadside Stand, along Malibu Canyon Road, on the way to the beach. Along with some friends, I piled into my hunter green station wagon (nicknamed The Hangin’ Wagon) and set off down the canyon. When we were almost at our destination, some idiot tried to pass us at high speed on a blind curve. Halfway through passing, the driver saw the dangerous oncoming traffic and stepped on the gas, tapping my fender as he frantically passed. He tried to pull off to the dirt shoulder, but he was going too fast. He pulled back onto the road but lost control — his car started to flip and then bounced sideways, directly into oncoming traffic! The driver was killed instantly, and an ambulance was called for the people injured in the other cars. My friends and I went over to look at the dead driver who had passed us. The roof of his car was collapsed and the man’s bare back jutted out the driver’s side window. All we saw was a slab of flesh, and as we watched, the blood under the skin seemed to undulate, turning from dark reddish-purple to a bluish-black. Someone cried out, “Does anyone have a blanket to cover him?” I brought out the red blanket and covered the body. After this, I could not consider doing the performance, so we all went home. While driving to the beach later that summer, I noticed that the red blanket was still lying by the side of the road. After driving past several times in the following months, I finally decided to retrieve the blanket. It is now the only relic of the performance that never was.

Performance Relics

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From left to right: Jeffrey Vallance, Richard DeKlotz and W. Scott Jacobs

Death Valley Boot Heel

rom 1967 through 1974, I was an avid Frisbee expert and member of the International Frisbee Association (I.F.A.). My

friends and I dreamed up all kinds of pranks we could do to get into the I.F.A. newsletter. We constructed and flew the world’s largest (cardboard) Frisbee and started the first club for Frisbee-catching dogs: Frisbee K-9 Corps. We organized a Frisbee competition at L.A. City Hall on Nixon’s inauguration day in 1972, with Los Angeles Mayor Yorty, spook-show host Larry “Seymour” Vincent, and fashion designer Mr. Blackwell in attendance. We flew Frisbees from atop Mt. Whitney (continental America’s highest peak) and across Badwater, in Death Valley, the lowest spot in the United States. There at Badwater, 282 feet below sea level, a briny pond is surrounded by jagged salt crystals. It was a sweltering 122ºF when we performed the World’s Lowest Frisbee Throw. At the site, I found a broken boot heel encrusted with salt crystals. A lone desert traveler must have lost his heel on the sharp, moonlike surface.

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Death Valley Boot Heel Performance Relics

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Bicentennial Snail 144

Bicentennial Snail

y stepfather had an upsetting habit of stepping on snails in

the backyard. For Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bicentennial celebration, on July 4th, 1976, I gathered up all the live snails I could find in the garden and painted American flags on their shells. I thought my stepfather would be too patriotic to step on the American flag! The plan worked, and for over two years the flag-bedecked snails crawled free throughout our backyard, as well as our neighborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yard. Here is one of the surviving shells.

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146

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Relic Collections

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Details of Relic Cabinet

Relic Cabinet

any relics, although interesting enough, may not require reliquaries all their own. Some of these relics are gathered here

into collections. The first multi-reliquary is in the form of a cabinet of curiosities, a mode of displaying rarities practiced since the 16th century. The artifacts include: a brass St. Peterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Basilica statuette, a metal phallus, ceramic phallic fetish, two Civil War bullets, bust of Franz Joseph, bust of Dante, brass Alamo statuette, particle from the Vatican, metal Tower of London statuette, country church statuette, cathedral statuette, metal Coca-cola pencil sharpener, plastic die from Reseda backyard excavation, Lapland reindeer bone scrimshaw, particle from the Stockholm Cathedral, Mexican Virgin Mary pin, metal statuette of the She-wolf of Rome with Romulus and Remus, small statuette of St. Francis, small statuette of La PietĂ , Roy Rogers badge, Austrian metal pocket shrine, Ex-Lax free-sample tin, metal horseman, kitten tooth, Tibetan reliquary, Dalai Lama pendant, German pocket shrine, St. Anthony cloth relic, enamel on metal Jesus charm, Heinz pickle, first-class relic of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, cloth relic, miniature Holy Bible viewer, Austrian glass pocket shrine, Lutheran Sunday School one-year pin, scrimshaw from Tonga (1985), miniature metal bone, vintage Elvis pendant, Masonic 25-year badge, Topo Gigo plastic figurine, miniature Austrian book from Velden, metal saint statuette, Pope John Paul II rosary case from the Vatican, Lutheran Sunday School two-year pin, McKinley memorial lapel badge, mini California license plate (1956), Austrian rosary case, Rat Fink model (enamel on plastic), temporary metal tooth cap from my root canal, G-Man badge, Masonic lapel badge, metal Sacred Heart Jesus statuette,Vatican reliquary with jewels, and an Oscar Meyer Weiner whistle given to me by Little Oscar. In the bottom of the reliquary cabinet is a drawer that contains a relic-crucifix collection, including: a jeweled plastic cross, a Chi Rho cross, Lutheran cross lapel pin, found Las Vegas glitter cross, papal cross from the Vatican, crucifix knife,Vallance Family heirloom cross, found crucifix from Turin, crucifix whistle, cross knife, cross made of wood from Bethlehem, cross with catacomb soil, Millennium penny cross, cross with stone from Calvary, cross with stone from Cave of the Nativity, and a found cross excavated from my Reseda backyard.

Relic Collections

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Relic Collection

resented in a gold-and-white standing cartouche reliquary, this relic collection includes: an assortment of holy medals,

milagros, ex indumentis relics (third-class relic cloths), particle from the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist attack, wood particle from Helena Elizabethkyrkan Church in Umeå, particle from the Stockholm Cathedral, grain of sand from the grave of my friend artist Carlos Almaraz in Hawaii, small round stone from the LBJ Ranch, metal BB from the Portland backyard, kernel of corn from the Blinky shrine, soil from the Roman catacombs,Tibetan Buddhist relic, Soviet satellite Lunik 3 badge (1959), plastic gun from gumball machine, cameo from Vienna, tintype of unknown man, “Craxi” Italian political badge, bits of excavated backyard plastic objects, and a paint blob from my studio floor in Canoga Park (1991).

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Relic Collection Relic Collections

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152

The Door of the Heart, in studio above La Fonda Mexican Restaurant

Autobiographical Relics

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The Wash Beanie 154

The Wash Beanie never had much fun on drugs. I always saw God. I didn’t want to smoke

anything because I thought smoking was unhealthy. A friend of mine named Snick convinced me that it would be cool to try some pot in a chocolate milk shake for my first (and last) experience. Bad idea — ingesting marijuana is far more intense and the effects last much longer. While we were stoned, Snick thought we should go for a walk — another bad idea. I put on a beanie that I’d gotten in Lutheran Sunday school that had Bible verses on it. On our walk, we passed over a cement storm drain (a.k.a. the Los Angeles River). Down at the bottom of the wash, I saw two gas caps and a waterlogged baseball card featuring Danny “Frisbee” Frisella of the San Diego Padres. At the time, I was collecting lost gas caps as a conceptual project. We proceeded down into the storm drain — another bad idea.While climbing down the steep sides of the sewer, I slipped and fell, hitting my head as I landed in the muck at the bottom of the channel. I felt disoriented, so I thought it wise to rest for a minute under the bridge. I fell asleep (or into a stupor). A boyfriend of a girl from my high school art class came down to get me out. When he awakened me, I was in some kind of weird altered state. I looked at him and thought: man=brother=father=Jesus=God. Then he blinked back and forth between God and the Devil. Just then, an old man with a white beard wearing white clothing and leading a white dog appeared on top of the bridge, looking like God the Father. As I was considering all this, the cops showed up. As they tried to get me to climb out of the wash, I decided that I was only dreaming, so I went limp and fell back into the muck. At some point, the Sunday school beanie fell off my head, and when I saw it beside me, I tried to read the Bible verses, which I thought had profound meaning, especially, “I have sinned.” Just then, a fire truck pulled up. The firemen tied me into a basket and lifted me out with a crane. As I rose from the ground, I heard the theme from the television show Mannix playing in my head. I imagined myself in a zeppelin, ascending to heaven, and started screaming! Later, I had to go to court and pay a $50 fine for public intoxication. In my FBI file, the incident is described: “He was found in the muck in a ditch and was noted to be babbling, sporadically trying to abuse himself.” (This is just about the worst thing that can be said of anyone.) Here is the preserved beanie, resting on a beautiful off-white pillow embroidered in pearl beads in a black lacquered pyramidal reliquary.

Autobiographical Relics

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Hand with Bone (Backyard Excavation) n 2002 in the August heat, I moved back to California from my world tour. My wife and I searched from Ventura to Orange County

and from Palmdale to Santa Monica for a place to live. By chance, we ended up in the west San Fernando Valley, not far from where I grew up. One of the first things we did in our new home was to plant a vegetable garden. While digging through the soil, I unearthed a small crucifix, various coins, a sprinkler head, hose nozzle, plastic dinosaurs (not mine), army men, a Hot Wheels car, and a fragment of a plastic hand holding a bone that looked like it had been chewed by a dog. The hand with bone reminded me of relics such as the finger bones of saints I had seen in Rome, or the exhumed bones of Blinky the Friendly Hen. Hand with Bone is preserved in a hunting plaque I got from the same store in Stockholm where the King of Sweden buys his hunting gear.

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Dinky Ornament (Lake Charles, Louisiana) n 1977, I wrote President Jimmy Carter’s daughter, Amy, at the White House. I received a postcard from Amy with a photo of her

on it. Upon investigating the card, I found another identical postcard stuck to it. It was addressed to Dinky Bonvillain in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Dinky turned out to be a wonderful 7-year-old child genius. I asked Dinky if she wanted to be my pen pal — and she has been my faithful correspondent ever since. In 1986, Dinky wanted me to come to Lake Charles to spend Christmas, New Year’s Eve and her birthday (Dec. 31) with her. Dinky was turning 17 and I was 31 — weird enough. Besides, I’d heard that meeting a pen pal could be a disaster, so at first I declined. Then Dinky’s parents called me and convinced me to come, saying that it would mean very much to Dinky. I thought, “What the heck.” It sounded so odd that I had to do it. On the day before the trip, Dinky and I had a long phone conversation planning what we would do. I flew there, landing in New Orleans. When I arrived, Dinky was so excited that she could not speak. Several days of this went by as I slept on the living room couch. My pen pal mostly stayed barricaded in her bedroom. Dinky’s mother took pity on me and, to keep me busy, gave me the job of decorating the Christmas tree. I checked all the twinkling lights to make sure they were all in working order. By accident I put one of the dud lights in my pocket. After a few days, I decided to catch a flight back to L.A., missing the Louisiana-style Christmas, New Year’s, and Dinky’s birthday party. When I got back home I found the Christmas light in my pocket.

Autobiographical Relics

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158

School photo of Cecilia Bonvillain

How Appropriate: A Dud Christmas Light! By Dinky Bonvillain

effrey and I have been pen pals for almost 30 years now. I met him through the mail, completely by accident. I’d sent a letter to

Amy Carter, just after her father was inaugurated. She (or someone on staff) sent me a postcard back, but the stamp on it got stuck to another letter, so it went to California with that letter. The other letter was also a response from Amy Carter, to Jeffrey, who was doing an art project for school. When I say school, I mean art school, but I didn’t know that at the time. I thought he was in 5th or 6th grade, maybe. Anyway, Jeffrey copied my address from the postcard and put it back in the mail.When I got it, it had McDonald’s stickers all over it. I didn’t understand why the President’s daughter would be sticking McDonald’s stickers on a postcard for me, but I didn’t bother writing back to ask. A day or two later, I got a letter from this kid in Los Angeles, asking if I wanted to be his pen pal. Sure! Sounds great. I knew he was a little older than me, but I didn’t find out for a few years that he was 15 years older. (It was always very innocent and sweet, though. Just so nobody gets any funny ideas.) It was sometime late in 1983 that Jeffrey appeared on Letterman. He went on to talk about his Cultural Ties project and about Blinky the Friendly Hen. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that my friend Jeffrey was on Late Night with David Letterman. He called me from a payphone in New York after taping, but well before the show came on. I felt so special, that he thought about calling to tell me about it. I was just some kid, and he was already a well-known artist, but he took the time to call and let me know about it. I was so excited, I don’t know how I didn’t pee my pants. We met for the first time just before I turned 17. By that time, I had a huge crush on him.When I actually met him, I freaked. It was way too real. All of a sudden, there was this guy I’d only known through letters and long-distance phone calls. There he was, live, in person,

on my couch! The visit didn’t go well. I stayed hiding in my room most of the time he was there.Yikes! I was a mess. I was so excited about meeting him, but then, after all the years of build-up, when the reality of it was right there staring me in the face, I froze. Jeffrey had become an imaginary figure for me, almost like a god. Okay, maybe a demigod, but still... And now he was real. For so long I poured my heart out to him, and he very kindly supported me. There were a million questions I wanted to ask him about his art, his travels, his house in Canoga Park, everything. All of a sudden, I didn’t know what to say or do. So I hid. Big chicken! I still get a little queasy and very much ashamed when I think about the way I behaved back then. It’s one of those, “If I could do it again...” kinds of things. It’s a wonder he ever spoke to me again. But he did, and here we are, still friends. We’ve met again since then, with much better results. He was in Austin that time, a couple of years after I moved back to Lake Charles from there. He and his wife,Victoria Reynolds, were in a group show of circus-related art at the Davis Gallery in Austin. I took off from work at the bar and went in for the weekend to see them. I really enjoyed that visit. After the show, we went to dinner at Thai Passion downtown and had some spicy food and good conversation. I very much look forward to seeing both of them again.

Autobiographical Relics

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Late 1970s to Early 1980s Punk Buttons

rom the late 1970s to the early 1980s, there was a unique relationship between the art

world and the Punk scene in Los Angeles. I hung out with musicians in the Associated Skull Bands, including Monitor, Human Hands, BPeople, and NON. Sometimes the band Monitor played and I would sing â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we were called the Tikis. I frequented concerts by the Romans, Screamers, Wall of Voodoo, the Dead Kennedys, Phranc, 45 Grave, Devo, Oingo Boingo, Meat Puppets, Peter Case, Suburban Lawns, Lawndale, and L.A.F.M.S. (Los Angeles Free Music Society) to name a few. At punk clubs I would also frequently meet my pals Gary Panter and Matt Groening. I would go see lots of bands, and they would come to my art openings. I designed buttons, flyers, and album art for all kinds of bands and came up with the name for the band and record label Solid Eye. For a while, I was even host of the MTV show The Cutting Edge. In this reliquary is a compilation of selected Punk buttons from the period. Also encased are two Blinky the Friendly Hen buttons from the same era.

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Jeffrey Vallance singing with The Tikis, 1979

Autobiographical Relics

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162

Door of the Heart Disaster Relic

rom 1978 through 1980, I worked on a piece called Door of the Heart at my art studio above La Fonda Mexican Restaurant,

on Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park in L.A. I conceived Door of the Heart while in Lutheran church, when I heard the line in a hymn, “Open the door of your heart and let Jesus in.” In that moment, I envisioned a throbbing bloody heart with a little door that opened to reveal Jesus inside. What I saw in two seconds took me two years to construct. I built a weather station–like stand with sculpted lifelike human internal organs on the front, with a door on the heart that opens to reveal a revolving platform with the pulsating interior of an anatomical heart, the romantic heart— (a couple kissing in front of a New York skyline), and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After working nearly two years and almost at the completion of the work, a disaster happened. During a heavy rainstorm, the roof of the studio collapsed. The heart dioramas were soaked and waterlogged, the sculpted heart was swollen, and later mold grew under the lacquered surface. In the center of the diorama I found a piece of the collapsed cottage-cheese ceiling. I had to restore and remake many of the details of the diorama, but at last, the Door of the Heart was saved. As a relic of the disaster, I preserved the fragment of the ceiling that fell into my sculpture and present it in a heart-shaped Mexican reliquary with a little door surrounded by heart-shaped milagros. (Later, I realized that the fragment of the ceiling is vaguely heart-shaped itself.) The sculpture Door of the Heart is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Autobiographical Relics

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Exact Model of My Penis, 1975

n 1975, when I was a healthy 20-year-old, I decided to make a lifelike model of my penis. For the construction I used

an old dried-up corncob, which I covered with papier machĂŠ and spackle that was sanded, gessoed and painted in acrylic.

164

Detail of Bedroom Museum

Autobiographical Relics

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Jeffrey Vallance in Bedroom Museum

BIOGRAPHY

effrey Vallance was born in 1955 in Redondo Beach, California. In 1979, he received a B.A. degree from

California State University, Northridge. In 1981, he earned an M.F.A. from The Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles. Jeffrey Vallance has presented exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world, including Dakar, Senegal; Reykjavik, Iceland; Zürich, Switzerland; Milan, Italy; Paris, France; Mexico City, Mexico; Santa Monica, California; Sydney, Australia; Hobart, Tasmania; Stockholm, Sweden; London, England; and Athens, Greece. He is represented by Bernier/Eliades in Athens, Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris, and Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles. Vallance has appeared on Late Night with David Letterman (NBC, 1983) and was host of MTV’s The Cutting Edge (1983). In 2004, Vallance received the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award for installation art. Jeffrey Vallance’s work blurs the lines between object making, installation, performance, curating and writing. Critics have described his work as an indefinable cross-pollination of many disciplines. For research,Vallance has often traveled to meet with appropriate officials in the field. Often an installation is exhibited in a site-specific museum location. Examples of this procedure include such projects as burying a piece of meat (chicken) at a pet cemetery in California, traveling throughout Polynesia in search of the origin of the myth of Tiki, having an audience with the King of Tonga, meeting with the President of Iceland, creating a Richard Nixon Museum, traveling to the Vatican, Turin, and Milan, Italy to study Christian relics, installing an exhibit aboard a tugboat in the Västerbotten Maritime Museum in Umeå, Sweden, curating shows in the fabulous museums of Las Vegas, such as the Liberace Museum, Debbie Reynolds Casino, Cranberry Museum and the Clown Museum, and initiating a campaign for “Preserving America’s Cultural Heritage,” a federal bill that would establish a benefit fund for all living visual artists in the United States.Vallance curated the first art world exhibition of the Painter of Light™ entitled Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth. In addition to exhibiting his artwork, Mr.Vallance has written for many publications and journals including Art issues, Artforum, L.A. Weekly, Juxtapoz, and Fortean Times. He has published four books: Blinky, the Friendly Hen, The World of Jeffrey Vallance: Collected Writings 1978-1994, Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth, and My Life with Dick. In 1995, Mr.Vallance was Artist-in-Residence at the University of Nevada, LasVegas. In 1999 to 2001, he was Professor in International Contemporary Art at the Umeå University in Sweden. In 2002,Vallance wasVisiting Artist at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania. In 2007, Jeffrey was Visiting Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. He currently teaches New Genres at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Autobiographical Relics

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168

Detail from Relics and Reliquaries,Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA. July 2007

Autobiographical Relics

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1975 Man Eating Popcorn at Zody’s, (intervention) Zody’s Department Store, Canoga Park, California. 1977 Wall Socket Plate Installation, (intervention) Members’ Room, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. 1978 Statements and Drawings by U.S. Senators, Entrance Gallery, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The U.S. Senate: A Survey on the Arts, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. 1980 An American in Senegal, Daniel Sorano Hall of National Treasure, Dakar, Republic of Senegal. 1981 Machines and Other Articles, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. 1982 Jeffrey Vallance, Social Historian, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara. Jeffrey Vallance, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California. 1983 Aitutaki, A Series of Pacific Images, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. 1984 Reykjavik/Origlio, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. 1986 Jeffrey Vallance, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland. 1987 Icelandic Women and the King of Tonga, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. 1988 The Throne Room: Icelandic Women and Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. the King of Tonga Part II, 1989 Blinky the Friendly Hen, 10 Year Anniversary Exhibition, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. “Blinky,” (video in collaboration with Bruce and Norman Yonemoto): “Open Channels IV,” Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; Electronic Arts Intermix, New York; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Fukui International Video Biennale, Fukui, Japan (catalogue); Beyond Baroque,Venice, CA; Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; California State University, Northridge; California Institute of the Arts,Valencia; KCTV Television Studio, Santa Barbara; World Wide Video Festival, Kijkhuis, The Hague, Holland (catalogue). Fossil Fuel and Tree of Renewal, Future Perfect, Los Angeles. A Journey to Extremes, Venice Art Walk,Venice, California (catalogue interview by Gary Kornblau). 1991 Jeffrey Vallance Presents The Richard Nixon Museum, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. Jeffrey Vallance Presents The Richard Nixon Museum, Marc Jancou Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland. 1992 Jeffrey Vallance Presents The Richard Nixon Museum, Museo Del Centro Internazionale Di Sindonologia, (intervention) Turin, Italy. 1993 Threes a Shroud, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. Randy Travis Project, (intervention) Randy Travis Museum, Nashville, Tennessee. Randy Travis Project, (intervention) Emi Fontana Gallery, Milan, Italy. 1994 The Nixon Museum, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France. 1995 The World of Jeffrey Vallance, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica. 1998 Paranormal Diagrams: Heretical Theories, Lehmann Maupin, New York. Jeffrey Vallance: A 25-year Survey, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France. Jeffrey Vallance/Drawings, Y1, Stockholm, Sweden. 1999 Paranormal Diagrams: Heretical Theories, The Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts. Anomalies, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica. Paranormal Diagrams: Heretical Theories, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica. Jeffrey Vallance: Culture Mix, (Premiere screening of Musé e d’Art de la Ville Paris, France, October 23 a film by Denis Dandurand and Julien Petit). 2001 The Virgin, the Poet and the President, Lehmann Maupin, New York. 2002 Clown Stains, Satellite Space, University of Texas (San Antonio), San Antonio, Texas. The Shape of Texas, (site-specific installation/simulacra) Majestic Ranch, Boerne, Texas. Relics from LBJ’s 1966 Visit to Australia, (intervention) Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania Saami and Aboriginal Flags (intervention), Black Kettle Museum, Cheyenne, Oklahoma. 2003 Saami and Aboriginal Flags (intervention), Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris 2006 Preserving America’s Cultural Heritage, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Preserving America’s Cultural Heritage, LACMA Lab, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. 2007 Reliquaries, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris Multivalence, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens Relics and Reliquaries, Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA. Reliquary Chapel, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Holland

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SELECTED PERFORMANCES 1973 L. A. City Hall Frisbee Throwing Spectacular, with Mayor Sam Yorty, “Seymour,” and Mr. Blackwell; 1976 Bicentennial Snails, 1977 Mojave Case, Dinky, My Pen Pal, 1978 Blinky, the Friendly Hen, 1979 Women Speak Out About Insects, 1985 Office, Off the Street (exhibition), I Joined the Samoan Police Force, Audience with His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, 1986 Tumunu Ritual, Meeting with Vigdis Finnbogadottir, President of Iceland, 1987 Houston Office, DiverseWorks, 1988 Blinky’s 10 Year Anniversary: Exhumation, Blinky’s 10 Year Anniversary: Autopsy, Blinky’s 10 Year Anniversary: Re-internment, 1989 The Temptation, The Temptation, 1990 Nixon Artifact Conference, with Ralph Rugoff, 1991 Nixon Convention, 1992 Appointment at the Vatican, Self-Portrait Sudarium Splashing with Barry, (Marian Barry Pool Party), Die Lanze und das Schweisstuch, meeting with Manfred Leithe-Jasper, Direcktor, Schatzkammer of Sacred and Secular Treasures, Fest der Heiligen Lanze, Josefsplatz, 1993 Superbarrio Protest Against Televisa, Crawling on My Knees to the Virgin, Crawling up the Holy Stairs, 1994 Lying In State, Inauguration of el Presidente Ernesto Zedillo, (with Fidel Castro and Superbarrio), 1995 The Weeping Virgin of Las Vegas, Guadalupe Festival, (with Rev. Ethan Acres and Victoria Reynolds), 1998 Blinky’s 20th Anniversary (I Contracted Chicken Pox), 1999 Passion Play, Rev. Ethan Acres och elever från Konsthögskola, Helena Elizabethkyrkan (Gammlia), 2000 Santa/Nojd (with Denis Angus) Pedagogic Audience with the King of Tonga, (with nine students from Umeå Konsthögskolan), 2001 Kyrkbröllop (Ice Chapel), Audience with His Holiness Pope John Paul II and Apostolic Blessing,(with Yassir Arafat,Victoria Reynolds and five students from Umeå Konsthögskolan), 2002 Clown Stains, Chance Meeting with Dr.William Levantrosser, Originator of the Nixon’s Dog Checkers Exhumation Hoax, Clown Stains II, Driving Through the Desert In Style With Paul Mitchell, 2003 Relics of LBJ’s 1966 Visit to Australia #2, (archive-intervention) Solar Eclipse over Snorri’s Hot Tub, Meeting with Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland, Tower of London Ravens, 2004 Meeting with Thomas Kinkade, Ivy Gate, 2005 Blasphemy Beach (with Victoria Reynolds), Cryptozoology Symposium, 2006 Bone Relic Label, Preserving America’s Cultural Heritage, Posing Bear for the Last Supper, for artist James Gobel, Cryptozoology Dialogue, Shrine of the Muses, 2007 The Epitaph: I Became a Human Candle,

Los Angeles City Hall; Jan 20. backyard, Canoga Park, CA; July 4. Mojave Desert, CA; Oct 22. ongoing correspondence by U.S. Mail; Oct 24, 1977 to present. Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, Calabasas, CA; April 27. Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles; Nov 12. The Old Print Shop, Los Angeles; April 27 - May 26. Leone Village, American Samoa; Nov. Royal Palace, Nuku’alofa, Tonga; Nov 22. Areora Village, Atiu, Cook Islands; January. Forseti Höll, Reykjavik, Iceland; May 20. Houston, TX; April 28 - May 9. Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, Calabasas, CA; Sept 28. Office of Dr. Roy L. Walford,Venice, CA; Sept 29. Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, Calabasas, CA; Sept 30. Collezione d’Arte Religiosa Moderna, Musei Vaticani, Cittá del Vaticano,Vatican, July 5, 1989 - Sept 21. Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace,Yorba Linda, CA, October 1. Inn at the Park Hotel, Anaheim, CA, August 8. Office of the Secretariat of State, The Pontifical Apostolic Palace, Cittá del Vaticano,Vatican, April 4. Obelisk, St. Peter’s Square,Vatican, April 4. Marian Barry’s house, Washington View Apartments, Washington DC, August 29. Kunsthistorisches Museum,Vienna; October 1. Hofburg Palace,Vienna; October 30. Televisa T.V. Station, Mexico City; March 25. Basilica de Guadalupe, Mexico City; March 26. Scala Sancta, Sancta Sanctorum, Rome; October 20. Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace,Yorba Linda, California. Presidential Palace, Mexico City, Mexico. North Las Vegas, behind 7-11, July 22.1996 Shrine of the Weeping Virgin of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Nevada, December 12. April. Västerbotten Museum, Umeå, Sweden, April 29. Santa Claus Village, Rovaniemi, Finnish Lappland, March 13 -15, 2000. Royal Palace, Nuku’alofa, Tonga, October 31, 2000. Ice Hotel, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden (Lappland) March 1, 2001, 2:00 p.m. Città del Vaticano,Vatican, October 31, 2001 (All Saints Day). University of Texas at San Antonio Satellite Space, March 1, 2002. Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, May 17, 2002. Davis Gallery, Austin, Texas, June 8, 2002. Interstate Highway 10 (from San Antonio to Los Angeles, through the deserts of Texas, New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns), Arizona and California, August 23 -28 2002. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas, January 8, 2003. Snorralaug, Reykholt, Iceland, May 31, 2003. Bessastadir (Presidential Residence), Áftanes Peninsula, Iceland, June 2, 2003. Tower of London, London, England, March 13, 2004. Kinkade Chapel, Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, April 2, 2004. Visit to Thomas Kinkade’s Studio, Los Gatos, CA; November 17, 2004. Virginia Beach,Virginia, July 20-23, 2005. Bates College Museum of Art, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, October 28-29, 2005. Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, March 7, 2006. UCLA, March 17; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, March 19; California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, March 29; NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio) and San Francisco City Hall, April 15, 2006. San Francisco, CA, May 2006. Epperson Auditorium,Vanderslice Hall, Kansas City Art Institute, October 26, 2006. Heroon of Museos, Hill of the Muses, Athens, Greece, December 3, 2006. Aghios Ioannis o Prodromos (Church of St. John the Precursor), Kaminia Village, Hydra Island, Argo-Saronic Archipelago, Greece, (Easter) April 6, 7, and 8, 2007.

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Detail from Relics and Reliquaries,Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA. July 2007

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THANKS FOR THEIR HELP AND ASSISTANCE ON THE BOOK I GRATEFULLY THANK: Ryan DiDonato, Andrea Harris-McGee, Cameron Jamie,Victoria Reynolds, and Dave Shulman. SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANKS TO: The Reverend Ethan Acres, Charles Addams, Carlos Almaraz, Västerbotten Governor Georg Andersson, Yasser Arafat, Soviet Assistant Secretary General Vadim Arkhipov, Barton Lidice Beneš, Jean Bernier, Jello Biafra, William J. Birnes, Mr. Blackwell, Cecilia “Dinky” Bonvillain, Mayor Tom Bradley, Leonid Brezhnev, Chris Burden, Peter Case, Ann Turner Cook, Joan Carroll Cruz, Amy Carter, Connie Chung, Mark Damato, Dick Deklotz, Marida Della, Torry “Morch” DeLucia, Reverend Domer of Canoga Park Lutheran Church, Marina Eliades, Snick Farkas, Mike Fees, Leon Festinger, Danny “Frisbee” Frisella, Matt Groening, His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden, Janna Holmstedt, George Herms, W. Scott Jacobs, Patrick Janelle Lyndon Baines Johnson, Carolyn Jones, Thomas Kinkade, Ed Kienholz, Gary Kornblau, David Letterman, Vladimir Lenin, Dorothy Maksym, Joel Martin, Vallerie McCoy, Frank McEntire, Hershel McLain (Priest of the Order of Saint Vincent of Lerins), John Paul Mitchell, Ricardo Montalban, Richard Milhous Nixon, Nathalie Obadia, Frida “Reindeer Girl” Oliv, Mattias Olofsson, Little Oscar, Gary Panter, His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Rick Potts, Henrica Reese, Karl Reese, Boyd Rice, Betye Saar, Soviet Secretary N. Semenikhina, Thomas Serafin, Paul Sieveking, Don Sievert, James Sievert, Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, Barry Sloane, Dorothy Hope Smith, John Shelby Spong, A.H. Stellhorn, His Highness King Tanumafili II of Western Samoa, Paul Thek, Mr. Tongilava, His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga, Aymer Vallance, Charles H. Vallance, Dustin Vallance, Greg Vallance, George Vallance, Harriette Vallance, Nina Vallance, Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Larry “Seymour” Vincent, Michael Uhlenkott, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, and Mayor Sam Yorty. THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING FOUNDATIONS, COLLECTIONS, MUSEUMS, CORPORATIONS, ORGINIZATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; CSUF Grand Central Art Center, Santa, Ana, CA; Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens, Greece; Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France; University of California, Los Angeles; Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud of Turin and the Shroud of Turin Museum (Museo Della Sindone), Torino, Italy; the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, Yorba Linda, CA; Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA; Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in Jerusalem), Rome, Italy; Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA; Castle Church, Wittenberg, Germany; International Museum of the Reformation, Geneva, Switzerland; International Crusade for Holy Relics, Los Angeles, CA;Trinity Lutheran Junior High School, Reseda, CA; Lutheran Church of the Resurrection and Canoga Park Lutheran Church, Canoga Park, CA; Society of St.Vincent de Paul Thrift Stores; Los Angeles City Hall; Gerber Product Company, Parsippany, NJ; Mt. Vernon Ladies Association, Mt. Vernon, Virginia; Amway Corporation, Ada, MI; Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Soviet-American Relations, Moscow, Russia, the Barry Sloane Collection, Los Angeles, CA; the Vatican Office of Relics, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums, and the Vatican Gift Shop,Vatican City; Majestic Ranch, Boerne, TX; Pontiac (a division of GM), Detroit, MI; Basilica of St. Mark the Evangelist,Venice, Italy; the Venice Biennale; Graceland, Memphis, TN; Convent of the Bridgettine Sisters, Rome, Italy; New Yorker magazine;The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS; Basilica di San Nicola, Bari, Italy; Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park; Orcutt Ranch Park, West Hills, CA; the Crypt of St. Cecilia, St. Callixtus Catacombs, Rome, Italy; Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, Calabasas, CA; the Liberace Museum, Las Vegas, NV;The Traveling Nixon Museum; Notre-Dame de Paris; Ralphs Grocery Company, Canoga Park, CA; the Schatzkammer of the Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria; Church of the Holy Fool, Sheffield, Al; Martin Luther Birthplace, Eisleben, Germany; Luther Hall Reformation Museum (Lutherhalle Reformationsgeschichtliches Museum) ,Wittenberg, Germany; Big & Tall, Repp Ltd., Casual Male, Canton, MA; Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, England; General Motors Corporation, Detroit, Mi; Canoga Park Chamber of Commerce, Canoga Park, CA; International Frisbee Association; Checkpoint Charlie Museum, Berlin, Germany; KHJ-TV, Los Angeles, CA; the Tower of London; the City of Las Vegas, NV; The Alamo (Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Inc.), San Antonio, TX; Thai Passion Restaurant, Austin, TX; Davis Gallery & Framing, Austin, TX; Umeå University, Sweden; Venetian Casino, Las Vegas, NV; Scala Sancta, Sancta Sanctorum, Rome, Italy; John Paul Mitchell Systems, Beverly Hills, CA; Mother Seton House, Baltimore, MD; Basilica of the Nativity, Bethlehem; Guadalupe Basilica, Mexico City, Mexico; American Bicentennial Commission; Helena Elizabethkyrkan Church, Umeå, Sweden; Los Angeles Flood Control District; El Camino Real High School,Woodland Hills, CA; USSR-USA Society, Moscow, U.S.S.R.; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; University College, London, England; the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum,Vailima, Western Samoa;Vailima Beer, Samoa Breweries Limited, Apia, Western Samoa; American Samoa Territorial Police; the Los Angeles Police Department, F.B.I. Headquarters, Washington, D.C.; University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; the Sydney Biennale; Redondo Pier Association, Redondo Beach, CA; MacArthur Park, Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation; Casa di Giulietta,Verona, Italy; Tongan Royal Palace, Nuku’alofa, Tonga; Alpine Village, Torrance, CA; Shrine of St. Guinefort, Sandras, France; the City of Lake Charles, LA; the Swedish Royal Palace (Kungliga Slottet) and the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, Stockholm, Sweden; Lady Luck Casino, Las Vegas, NV; MTV; Fortean Times; L.A. Weekly, Valley Green Sheet; Malibu Creek State Park, Malibu, CA; the Walt Disney Company; University of Texas, San Antonio; The LBJ Library, Austin, TX; The LBJ Ranch, Johnson City, TX; Thomas Kinkade Company, Morgan Hill, CA; Oscar Meyer Company, Madison, WI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Reseda Chamber of Commerce, Reseda, CA; Mast-Jägermeister AG, Wolfenbuttel, Germany; La Fonda Mexican Restaurant, Los Angeles, CA; and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem.

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Reliquary installation, De Vleeshal, Middelburg,The Netherlands

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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY FULLERTON - GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER Andrea Harris-McGee, Dennis Cubbage, Alyssa Wiens, Tracey Gayer, Eric Stoner, Tracy Duran, Yevgeniya Mikhailik and Hiromi Takizawa GRAND CENTRAL ART FORUM Greg Escalante, Steve Jones, Mitchell De Jarnett, Marcus Bastida, Teri Brudnack, Jon Gothold, John Gunnin, James Hill, Mary Ellen, Houseal, Julie Perlin-Lee, Jon Webb, Dennis Lluy, Mike McGee, Robert Redding and Stuart Spence Advisory members: Peter Alexander, Rose Apodaca Jones, Kristine Escalante, Mike Salisbury, Anton Segerstrom, Shelley Liberto, Stuart Spence and Paul Zaloom CAL STATE UNIVERSITY FULLERTON President Milton Gordon, Jerry Samuelson, Marilyn Moore and Bill Dickerson EXHIBITION DESIGN STUDENTS Jacqueline Bunge, Karen Crews, Joanna Grasso, Michel Oren, John N. Sampson, Chih-zer Yee, Rachel Chaney, Carlota Haider, Danielle Susalla This book has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Jeffrey Vallance – Relics and Reliquaries for the Grand Central Art Center Gallery, Santa Ana, California, where it was presented 2 June – 22 July, 2007 This book was published by California State University Fullerton Grand Central Art Center and the Grand Central Press.

Art Direction: Ryan Di Donato Layout Design: Patrick Janelle Curators: Andrea Harris-McGee and Dennis Cubbage Editor: Sue Henger Photography: Mark Chamberlain, Eric Stoner and Doug Parker, Jules Bates, Dave Dean, Boris Kirpotin, Douglas Parker Studio Printed by: Prolong Press, Hong Kong First Printing March 2008

All Artwork © Jeffrey Vallance Book © 2008 Grand Central Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher and artist.

GRAND CENTRAL PRESS CSUF Grand Central Art Center 125 N. Broadway Santa Ana, California 92701 714-567-7233 714-567-7234 www.grandcentralartcenter.com International Standard Book Number:

0-9771696-7-7 (978-0-9771696-7-2)