Modesto Gallery

Modesto.  The actual name of this piece is Modesto: Poverty, Meth, Discontentment, Death.

I took a photo in 2012 when I was downtown at 3 am one night.  I think I was just coming home from traveling somewhere.  Despite being tired, I stopped across the street and decided to photograph the sign for myself.

At the bus stop, there were two people sitting on the bench.  One had a sleeping bag wrapped around them, and the other was just sitting there.

I messed around in Gimp Shop with this photograph and made the lights say something else.

Here’s the original sign in the day time in Modesto.  I found each and every one of its claims to be wholly false for the 20 years I was stuck there off and on between going to college and trying to escape:

Water: I guess this is supposed to be a nod to farmers out there.  Now, they routinely have corporate farms where they spray pesticides on the non-organic crops.

They only hire illegal immigrants from what I saw when I drove through the fields as you leave Modesto toward the 132 highway going to the Bay Area.

Wealth: This was something way out of reach for an artist like myself.  They had a gallery called the Mistlin there that was ran by one woman who painted little quaint technically sloppy watercolor paintings.

I asked her what sales were like, and she said that was nothing she was that concerned about.  No one was buying as the art there was all low quality.

Her name was Chella and no one but full on communists or boring artists were allowed to show their work there.  That was fine by me!

When I asked her why my piece couldn’t be shown, she replied, “It promotes drug use because of your inclusion of the word ‘Meth'”.

Apparently, she didn’t understand my position against this dangerous and life shortening drug (or maybe was too oblivious about the real meth problem in her own town).

Chella either believed I promoted methamphetamine, which is totally not where I stand, or she just didn’t want to get shown up for being a hack painter.

Contentment: My experience in Modesto was filled with anything but contentment.  I guess if you’re a mind-numbed high on meth communist zombie, it’s easier to be content being broke all the time and not able to afford the backbreaking rent to live in a stratospheric aerosol injected desert.

The other factor leading to my real lack of contentment was how the police just kept coming for me, even when I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

There’s a laundry list of fraudulent cases brought against me there, especially as I was trying to leave they worked with my family members to try and push a destruction of property case against me for fixing my parent’s pool so they could sell their house.

That’s right, when I helped them they attacked me more!  My sister got really involved making up stories about me so much that it actually helped to have this case dismissed, but not until I had to wait 5 months with it hanging over my head.

Health: Well, nothing could be further from the truth having actually lived there.  All the smog from the Bay Area and the millions of cars there everyday escapes the bay and the carbon monoxide gas flows down into the valley producing a chemical haze every day.

Gavin Newsom and the federal government regularly spray tons of chemtrails in the atmosphere in Modesto making it even hotter in the summers.  It nearly never rains there anymore and growing grass is nearly impossible.  Gavin’s turning Modesto and Sacramento into Phoenix probably for his own amusement.

If you hang out there long enough, you’ll notice lots of the meth crazed nuts walking around especially downtown after dark.  They can be observed in their natural habitat by some tell-tale signs:

They are constantly talking to themselves and even more times yelling at the voices in their head.  They usually carry tons of suitcases everywhere, always have some starving dog with them or some burnt out chick with messy hair and three total teeth in her mouth walking beside them.

You’ll never see them with a sleeping bag, as tweakers never sleep!  A single tweeker chick messed up the whole downtown of Modesto for everyone about 20 years ago.  I remember she was dating this little beta male wuss and she threw chairs at him from the outdoor tables as he kept nodding his head and saying, “Yes, ma’am!”.

I do credit the police for taking her to jail lots of times for doing this, but there’s only so much you can charge someone doing that with as the chairs were metal and almost indestructable.  She would get out again and as soon as she did, she’d drag her little boy down there by his ear and begin to immediately throw chairs at him with her green straggly hair and shaved sides of her head.

Eventually the business owners downtown, where there used to be a night life, stopped providing seating outside and then night life was over for good.  Thanks meth!

So, there you have it, the real Modesto.

By the way, I remember how hard the economy took a hit back in 2008 with the sub-prime mortgage fraud.  Prior to 2008 I had quite a few friends there, but way less afterward.  I can remember driving down the street where we lived then and all I saw were foreclosure signs at every house.

The working class was replaced by illegal immigrants and foreigners.  The people living on my street now live 20-30 in a house and work either in the fields, in housekeeping or in lawn care.

A single family cannot afford a home there now due to skyrocketing costs.  But they give away homes and cars to immigrants who live off grid next to the fields.  They get every form of public assistance and welfare possible.  They also are a huge voting block and elect politicians that look the other way.

I wouldn’t have been bothered by them had I not fallen on hard times.  I found it impossible to make it out of the rut I was in there as all the crap jobs were taken by someone from another country.

When I ran out of food and needed assistance for a short time, there they were again collecting food stamps.  So, the immigrants come in and take all the low wage jobs increasing taxes and housing prices and also break the government through assistance programs.  Cesar Chavez seriously was a genius!

This is not the immigrant’s fault, as who wouldn’t want to make 20 times more money and get all kinds of free stuff?  This is why I’m not for the Trump plan to round up the immigrants and deport them all.  If they run out of work, they’ll leave willingly!

The problem is with the people who keep giving them money to screw over everyone in their community.  Who’s to blame?  The farmers mainly as through their greed they have huge thousands of acres farms where they house these immigrant slaves.

Next on the blame train is the government officials both federally and locally that allow them to vote and pass all kinds of laws to get them more free stuff.

Lastly, the middle class homeowners who hire these workers under the table to clean their homes and mow their lawns are largely culpable as they fund the problem for convenience.

You can’t really blame the homeowners much though, as the massive California costs to hire someone from the US is exhorbitant vs. just giving some Mexicans $50 to do the same job and get it over with.

I spoke about this oil painting’s destruction due to Gessobord on the About Page, so just check it out there.

So, why include a communist flag instead of an American one?  This is because I found out where Modesto stood one day.

I used to visit a local coffee shop there with some friends back when I had friends.  All the hundreds of drawings and paintings I did in public were always shut out of being shown anywhere, no matter how many places I tried.

My art was far different back then and very abstract with line work, watercolor and pen & ink techniques.  There was nothing controversial about it at all then and lots of people commented that they loved what I was doing.

I met a gentleman there once and he looked at some of my art.  He told everyone I was his main inspiration for getting into art.

At this cafe I saw many of his large pieces displayed.  Having not seen him for years, I chatted it up with him and said I was happy to see that he had a venue for his art.  He then told me he was a communist, which I thought strange, but I liked him and some of his work so I just rolled with it.

Later I sat down a few days after our meeting and began working on another of the many drawings as I would do at various cafes in town as it sure beat being yelled out by my parents and cops called on me.  The owner kicked me out of the shop and told me never to come back just for drawing.

Thats what communism does: is steals people’s inspiration, then kicks the person to the curb who helped them get to where they were.

I had many people that I once trusted in Modesto betray me on multiple levels.  Especially my family, past church friends, past friends and worst of all people I used to tutor in algebra back when I went to college.

One guy I helped learn algebra at his parent’s home when he was in high school.  Later when I was homeless after one of the several legal attacks by my parents and sister’s cult, I came by his car dealership and asked if he had any kind of job at all as I was starving.

He told me to leave and not bother applying.  He claimed he was a christian, which I found dubious as his mannerisms seemed very homosexual now.

I could see by his bulking up by like 150 lbs. or more he wouldn’t run out of food anytime soon.

That’s how they roll in Modesto.  Gain your trust, hang out with you for years then completely forget who you are when you need their help.