I was in graduate school when the call came. My mother explained that my grandfather would be going to the doctor in the morning. He had to take a shower that night, and his foot was wrapped in plastic so he wouldn’t get it wet. “He wants you to help him,” she said.

Documentation of Adam Overton interpreting Exit Strategies by Liz Glynn, on November 4, 2008, Los Angeles, CA, as part of Exchange Rate: 2008, an international performance exchange organized by Elana Mann. Photo by Vivian Babuts.

As an artist, almost everything I do contributes to the “brand” associated with my name, but when I’m playing roller derby I’m known only as PLAYER 1.

Inside the Ship of My Imagination
Driving through the Arizona night sky. Driving through Arizona, looking up at the night sky. There are certain places known for their darkness, a quantitative way of describing visibility of the heavens from the ground: a term I’ve forgotten (illuminance?)

In response to your request, I thought I would come up with a list of second acts that I’m not doing, but wish I could do on a regular basis. This more realistic set of desires will, I imagine, make me sound even more interesting (like naming books you’ve heard of but haven’t really read).

Parson’s Branch in Bessemer, Alabama, did not have octopus, but I did learn to catch snapping turtles by hand. I grew up with a bamboo fishing pole in one hand and a .22 caliber rifle in the other.

In choir, we sang hymns (I sang soprano in my early years). The best moments of that experience were when voices were held in the echo chamber of a resonant hall, calling down ecstasy from on high. It all seemed interlinked: waves upon resonant waves. In the early seventies, during my teens and early twenties, experimentation was everything.
The successes and failures (mostly the former, fortunately) of the Manchester United Football Club have made increasing demands on my time, energy, psyche and emotional sense of well-being since 1999.

A confession: as unoriginal as it sounds, two years ago I began a list of places I had to see before I die, and initially spent more time dreaming about what to add to the list than actually visiting them.

Most days, I fall out of bed,
make some coffee and have a smoke by the greenhouse
while my cat purrs in the background.

The world is really a big, messy, complicated, violent and antagonistic thing. Life is sometimes just like that, and sometimes—albeit briefly—not. Have you seen the film Art School Confidential? The old, cynical, alcoholic artist Jimmy was a pivotal character in the film.

The kitchen is not so much a second act for me as more of the same. I’ve decided that nothing needs to be complex or precise about cooking: it can be all about possibility and nuance propelled by conviction.
Thinking back over my “first act,” I worked for six commercial and two university galleries, four museums, numerous private collections and the largest art shipping and handling company in the country.
