DAN BINA / MOONSHINE SWAGGER

“It is said that myth is the public dream. My work is like a dream, a return to the private myth. Blues, Jazz, and whiskey all flow together like the Mississippi River itself. Charlie Parker spills out of the apartment windows into the calm Kansas City night and I hold the moment like a story to save for later, like a memory. Memories are a lot like dreams. They swim together. I manipulate images from the past into new stories. I dig through piles of American mythology and I listen for a riff, a melody. When I play it back, I bend the notes.

Collage is a means for generating new unexpected ideas; it surprises me. It’s my outlet for digging through history and finding gems embedded in paper. It is a love affair with images as much as a dissent against commercial programming. Collage is a cocktail with a twist. Collage is a dialogue. I build an improvisational setting and I construct my own vignettes like a trumpet solo. There is so much material out there to play with and to change into a new message. There is a deep force in every artist, a perpetual dissatisfaction with the gap between what exists and what could. Moonshine Swagger is a Dionysian stroll through the night hand in hand with belief and doubt.” (Dan Bina, January 2019)