Even if you have never been to Coney Island, it is easy to imagine it; once you are there, it is hard to picture anything else. It captures you. It must have always existed. Like Jazz has always existed. Try painting a mural in Coney Island and listen to the screams. On the periphery are families caged and propelled into the air with bungee rope or a car of arms reaching skyward. They pass; it loops and falls.

Jerry Tartaglia showed Jack Smith super-8 films in Berlin years ago. I saw it and can't get it out of my mind. One flick was of several people parading the sandy beach of Coney Island. It was an Arabian entourage, a rag-tag crew among beach goers, hot-dog eaters, crying babies, garbage. Smith brought you back and forth between Egypt and New York. It was convincing and transcendent: his raggamuffin harem becoming royalty, with the flotsam and jetsam suddenly incidental. I wanted this mural to do the same: to become part of the push-and-pull; to take you to a snake pit in your mind and then spit you back into New York; then again arrest your eyeballs into writhing snakes, violent horizontals and suddenly you are back to the shrieking carnival, to the barking boardwalk, to the beer and lights.

-Jim Drain

Photo Credit: Martha Cooper