JOHN PATRICK MCKENZIE with MELISSA NOLLEDO

I previously wrote on John Patrick McKenzie's art in my essay, "Drawing Words to Transcend Definitions and Make Words More Meaningful," for Our Own Voice, April 2005. While an old article, it still captures why I am so drawn to McKenzie's art (it inspired my first and only "Googled poem"), and why his works have their own "project room" viz North Fork's bathroom. McKenzie has achieved something difficult for any artist: his own recognizable and unique aesthetic by how he chooses to color or block in the spaces within letters (e.g. the spaces created within the letters "e" and "b").  The result is his own font with which elevates his writings so that they're not just poetry but visual art. You can see my essay HERE, but I want to share this excerpt about this autistic artist:

"McKenzie's process hearkens how certain autistics have difficulty integrating various sensory inputs they receive; for McKenzie, drawing the words he hears or reads from his environment may provide the means of processing information. The nature of McKenzie's imagery also befits the obsessive trait known to be associated with autistics.

"Dr. Larry E. Dumont, Director of Inpatient Child and Preadolescent Psychiatry, KidsPeace Hospital (Orefield, PA) and the curator of the Ricco/Maresca exhibit has said, in fact, that all artists are autistic in that all artists are obsessive. But Dumont also notes that, among autistic artists, there are good as well as bad artists. 

"An obsession with repetition might explain McKenzie's works, but he still made aesthetic decisions that make his drawings more effective in pleasing the viewer. For example, in "Bruce Lee likes 1980," he didn't cover the entire drawing with words. This would contrast with a friend who said his autistic son, in his drawings, would have covered every single inch of the page. McKenzie's allowance for blank spaces, on the other hand, creates a floating effect for his words which serves his drawings well."

This is "Bruce Lee likes 1980":

The following are images of McKenzie's works in its own Project Room at North Fork (though the installation features a "guest artist" Melissa Nolledo* -- seen in first image below, to the right of the mirror -- because the repetition in her lovely digital painting "Rice Wine" made me see an affinity with McKenzie's works):

Outside of the Project Room in the main gallery, a small McKenzie also coexists peacefully on a table with a book study by Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza and a boxed mini installation by Emmy Catedral:

I'm blessed to live with the works of this wonderful artist. He is an inspiration.

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* Here is a better image of Melissa Nolledo's digital painting, "Rice Wine":