“I can’t stop watching The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1981), a stop-motion animation film that probably gave thousands of kids night terrors. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s grotesque and disturbing, but truly aesthetic. For those of you not familiar with the film or original fable, here it is in short: the town of Hamelin has a rat problem, and when a mystical jester shows up, the aristocrats contract him to lure the rats away by serenading them. The piper lays down a fat tune that leads the rats into the river and they all drown. The town rejoices, but the aristocrats don’t pay up—so the piper lures the town’s kids into another dimension never to be seen again. 

Morality and mortality float to the surface of this tale, but a universal assumption about the power of music remains lurking beneath. To me, it’s all about the piper’s music, and how music can influence us. It’s about the desire to witness the magic of art in its purest form, even if that means certain death. We all know that music isn’t like other art forms—it hits us more viscerally. A painting doesn’t make us dance and less often brings us to tears. 

When making drawings, paintings, or sculptures, I am looking for that direct feeling or connection that, much like the Piper’s song, has the power to hypnotize. To make the painting of the whitewater rafters in this display of works, I had my friend Sarah snap an unauthorized photo of some teens in a sinking raft, bailing out their boat with a tie-dye Croc. This sighting might not have been music per se, but was damn near close. Sometimes things just come together and present themselves, and if we’re lucky, we notice. Each and every one of these works are a testament to moments lived—notes in the piper’s song.”

–Sean T. Randolph

Sean T. Randolph (b.1986) lives and works in Tucson, AZ. His works are minor parables of wonky critters and harebrained heroes in the pursuit of half-truths. Rather than revealing a moral, these homespun tales teeter between anxiety and enlightenment. The work has its own diplomatic ecosystem where aluminum foil is elevated to the level of silver and the jester can be king. Sean has a MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and a MFA in Studio Art from ArtCenter College of Design. Both of these disciplines inform his practice. He has been included in exhibitions at The Mountain View Mausoleum, Other Places Art Fair and the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. Sean has had solo exhibitions at Gattopardo, O-Town House, Kyle and Lindsay's Apartment, and Tiny Town Gallery. His work can be found in the special collections at The Poetry Center in Tucson, The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and The Love Library in San Diego, CA.