2025 marked the 25th anniversary of the completion of my Walmart Project, which I did in graduate school in Alfred, NY. Shot on MiniDV at 720×480.

(For more images, see The Walmart Project on the projects page)

Part One:

I started this project in 1998 when I became curious about why the Walmart was booming as half the quaint downtown stores in neighboring Hornell were literally empty or going out of business. At the time, there wasn’t much widespread knowledge about the predatory practices invented by Sam Walton/Walmart that have since been widely replicated in big box stores everywhere, and, thankfully, more widely known.

To put it in context, this was about 6 years before the term “shop-dropping” and 7 years before Banksy hung his art in the MoMA. It was about a year before the Yes Men formed and roughly five years after the Barbie Liberation Organization, who my professor clued me into after seeing what I was up to at Walmart. I immediately wrote to B.L.O. (they went by RTMark at the time) with an email titled “Fuck you, you assholes!!”, which I thought they might find funny (they did), and told them what I was up to. I ended up working with them a few years later – after they morphed into the Yes Men – on various projects, including Dow Chemical and the Fake NYTimes.

Rewatching this full length version of my film for the first time in well over a decade has me appreciating what support and time can do for an artist with ambitious, slow-developing projects. Alfred had no tuition for graduate students and they paid me a modest amount to be a T.A. This gave me time to research, develop, and experiment with the work until I found its full form. 

I do wonder what would have happened if I had found support for my follow-up project after grad school, where I planned to form a nightclub act at a small casino near tribal lands and a nuclear test site. Then again, maybe I’d be in jail ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I am sincerely grateful for the support that I got from Alfred and many others who have helped me realize projects and offered support along the way. Thank you!

Part II

When I was working on this project in graduate school (1998–2000), I created a website for the project and for myself as an artist. I kind of miss that clunky old site—maybe I’ll bring it back in some form. These were early days for web development, and it helped me get some opportunities, like a group billboard alteration show at CBGB’s with the Billboard Liberation Front, Ron English, and others. It wasn’t really some kind of career builder, but it was an awesome experience showing work in that historic punk venue. It was humbling to see my small collection of alterations from the mid ’90s in Oakland (work that got me accepted into grad school, btw) next to the volume of BLF and Ron English alterations, who had walls full of work the length of the venue, expertly done. John Law wore a hunting hood that covered his face the whole night. Everyone was welcoming. I stayed in a flophouse in Manhattan for $50 a night that had a mattress hanging like a hammock. Roaches scattered upon entering, of course. Glory days, in the wink of a young man’s eye.

This was also the early days of eBay, and I remember working on my website in the computer lab next to an undergrad who was making some extra money selling his hair as “authentic” clippings from Winona Ryder, claiming to be a stylist who worked with her on films. eBay was a real seller’s market then.

I was at Alfred as a sculpture major, but sculpture was really just the default genre at the time if you worked in a multidisciplinary way. New Genres was where you might fit, but most schools didn’t have that as an MFA option. There were far fewer MFA programs than there are now. The multimedia MFA program actually began at Alfred when I was in my second year. I got in as an alternate when someone declined. The way non-ceramic MFA candidates appeared to be chosen at the time was often based on whether they would make a good TA for a class (no slight on my talented cohort), and no one needed help teaching weird public political work and billboard alterations. Go figure.

There were quite a few old-school professors teaching glass, sculpture, and furniture at Alfred who were extremely dubious about what I was up to, with grave concerns about the amount of video I was incorporating. I never had a true mentor there, but I cobbled together what I needed, mostly through support from the professors doing new genres and video work, as well as from my fellow grads.

I didn’t apply anywhere in the West—I was looking for a change. I got accepted into two programs: Cranbrook and NYSCC at Alfred University (full title). Cranbrook looked like a cool program, but wanted something like $30k a year for three years. Alfred wanted to pay me. I was never good with money, much of that due to lack of interest, but even I could see the obvious choice. I never would have made this work at Cranbrook, because it was something I came across in the poorest county in New York, where the impacts of Walmart’s destructive business practices were on full display in a way that’s more hidden in urban or more affluent areas.

It’s fun to look back and see this work next to more recent projects, like Artifice of Power or my first public sculptures for the City of Emeryville, Unwinding the Anthropocene 1–3. I still haven’t really figured out how I fit into the art world proper, or how to make a good living, but I remain deeply compelled by abuses of power, multidisciplinary work, and learning new things in order to make work.