Chamblee54

A person, Bryan Lewis Saunders, conducted an experiment. “After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self. So I devised another experiment where everyday I took a different drug and drew myself under the influence. Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me.”
Abilify / Xanax / Ativan ~ 90mg Abilify ~ 1 sm Glass of “real” Absinth ~ 10mg Adderall ~ 10mg Ambien ~ Bath Salts ~ 15mg Buspar (snorted) ~ 4 Butalbitals ~ Butane Honey Oil ~ 250mg Cephalexin ~ 1/2 gram Cocaine ~ Computer Duster (2 squirts) ~ 2 bottles of Cough Syrup ~ 1 “Bump” of Crystalmeth ~ 4mg Dilaudid ~ 1 shot of Dilaudid / 3 shots of Morphine ~ DMT ~ 60mg Geodon ~ Hash ~ Huffing Gas ~ Huffing Lighter Fluid ~ 7.5mg Hydrocodone / 7.5mg Oxycodone / 3mg Xanax ~ 3mg Klonopin~ 10mg Loritab ~ Marijuana (Kine Bud) ~ G13 Marijuana ~ Morphine IV ~ Psilocybin Mushrooms (2 caps onset) ~ 2mg Nicotine Gum ~ Nitrous Oxide ~ Nitrous Oxide / Valium I.V. ~ PCP ~ 7.5mg Percocet ~ 2 Pot Brownies ~ 1 Glass of Pruno ~ Marijuana Resin ~ 4mg Risperdol ~ Ritilin (doseage unknown-snorted) ~ Salvia Divinorum (right before but mostly right after) ~ 100mg Seroquel ~ 100mg Trazadone ~ 20mg Valium ~ Valium I.V. (doseage unknown in hospital) ~ Valium IV, (Albuterol, Saline & Oxygen) mixture ~ 2mg Xanax ~ 50mg Zoloft (after 2 weeks prescribed) ~ 10mg Zyprexa ~ Ativan / Haloperidol (doseage unknown in hospital)
Mr. Saunders is a piece of work. He has done a self portrait every day for years, and performs something called “stand up tragedy”. His website has a massive interview page. The rest of this post will be selections from that.
Recently there’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about a series of self-portraits that Bryan Lewis Saunders drew/painted/etched while he was on a whole potpourri of different drugs. My friend Kelly sent me the link because the day previous, I sent her a video of some chick on YouTube describing the experience of turkey-bastering DMT up her butthole . That her brain connected Bryan Saunders with that video should give you some idea as to what his work is like.
These portraits alone, though, are hardly interesting enough to merit Bryan any additional attention. It wasn’t until I realized that these 32 paintings comprise only 1/250th of a 16 year self-portrait project that I decided to spend a Sunday afternoon Skyping him at his home in Johnson City, Tennessee. As our conversation teetered between horrifying and hilarious, I realized that–although colossal–the self-portrait project is only a fragment of his dense portfolio of other equally involved multimedia projects. Bryan’s hermitic, Appalachian livelihood fostered an unarguable talent for embarking on extremely bizarre and elaborate artistic undertakings.
What started as a simple conversation about self-portraits spiraled into a cordial chat about crystal meth, Chinese standup comedy, blood, obese girls who suck dicks for attention, the process of getting severely overweight dead people out of an apartment building, and a few other equally engaging topics. By the end of our two-hour chat, I decided that Bryan Lewis Saunders is a living manifestation of Xenia, Ohio in Harmony Korine’s film, Gummo . And now he’s my friend. ~ ~
Well I wanted to be a famous comedian in China. I was living in my aunt’s trailer in Virginia, and the family was having a lot of problems. One of my cousins was on meth. My great aunt had Alzheimer’s. Another one had a stroke. It was a lot of confusion and constant arguing back and forth, so I just thought to myself, “well I’ll be better in China.” I spent like six hours a day, seven days a week for like nine months straight teaching myself Mandarin. I thought that I’d go to some cities in communist China where they don’t have any tourism, and I would do standup comedy there. I figured within one year I’d have my own sitcom, then I’d be doing blockbuster features in China, and then I’d be a big international superstar. I went and did a Chinese wedding in New York City, and it went pretty well, so I went to Fujo to become a superstar. After like the third day, I met a guy who could speak English pretty well, and he told me that they didn’t have stand up comedy in China. I was pretty devastated, so when I was forced to leave I thought, “Well hell, Tennessee is pretty cheap, so I moved back here and decided that I’d just do standup tragedy and try to make all of these strangers cry instead. ~ ~
What were your favorite substances consumed? What were the worst?  Xanax (totem poles – 4mg) would probably be one of my favorites.  It made me feel real at peace with life and with the trauma, and it also made me a real social dynamo!  I’m sort of a recluse but with the Xanax I could just walk up and talk to total strangers!  The Butane Honey Oil was a real blast too!   The worst is a toss up between PCP and Seroquel (heavy tranquilizer/anti-psychotic agent) 100 mg.  I went to a doctor to hopefully get more different drugs and told him about my project and showed him my pictures on various drugs and he only wrote one prescription for 90 Seroquels thinking I was psychotic.~ ~
What’s next? Where’s the acid?  As far as acid goes, I’ve tried acid 3 times in NE Tennessee and all 3 times it was really crappy.  Nothing like the U.V.A. acid in the mid eighties.  People here say, “I did 8 of ’em.  I took 4.  I did 6 of ’em.”.  And I’m like, “If one doesn’t do it for you, why take 7 more?  That’s ignorant!”  As for what’s next, it all depends on what people give me.  I don’t seek them out and there are still plenty of big ones I need to draw under the influence of; Heroin, LSD, DMT, Computer Duster, Ayahuasca, Peyote and I don’t want to die until I do a self-portrait on Crack.  You see today we live in a narcissistic and obsessive culture, totally overflowing with drugs.  And as an artist I am the filter.  Picasso and Matisse got it right when one of them said, “Cézanne is the father of us all.”  It’s not a stretch by any means to say, “On some days, my brain chemistry is my vantage point and my face is his Mont Sainte-Victoire.”   For people interested in this particular body of work, my Facebook has the best and most up to date collection of drawings under the influence. And I’m a weird person, and I’m way more well known for other stuff besides the drawings and drugs… ~ ~
On your MySpace page, you say you have mental problems. How do you deal with these on a day-to-day basis?  I’ve been labeled with: Antisocial Personality Disorder (as a child), Borderline (in my teens), Schizotypal (as a young adult), Paranoid Schizophrenic (at present)…  but I believe all that says much more about the system of classification than it does about me as an individual. Their response to that, of course, is that I’m in denial. So I self-medicate with art, obsessively and constantly, and when things in my environment get too overwhelming, I check into a hospital and get medicated, get out, wean myself off the drugs and start over. Not a cycle I recommend, but I know myself well and have the art…I’ve been living with it forever. Sometimes when I get “woggy” and can’t understand what people are saying, I’ll go to another country and fight the (imaginary) mental language problem with a (real genuine) language problem and make art…  It depends on how severe the crisis is. I’m the most rational psychotic I know, if I even am psychotic? I’m fortunate in that respect; most aren’t so lucky.
Is there anything you’d like to add or anything you’d like to tell our readers?  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share what I do! It feels good to be included here. Oh, and if you’re online sometime and come across my series of self-portraits under the influence of different drugs, know that I don’t “party” I just experiment, and I’m willing to trade art for drugs that I haven’t drawn myself on yet. But keep the jenkem to yourselves! ~ ~
Any last words?  “Be leery of signs. Once I drove to Alabama, and the first fruit stand I came to across the State Line had a sign that said, “COLOREDS WELCOME”. It struck a nerve. I didn’t know if they meant it or not. With language like that – surely they didn’t. It confused me. The same with the “Free Speech Zone” sign. I’ve performed at many places here in Johnson City using the exact same material and have never had a problem with censorship. After all it’s America ? The only place that advertises FREE SPEECH here, is the only place that DOESN’T allow it. So be wary of signs, chances are – THEY ARE INSTRUCTING THE EXACT OPPOSITE !!!”