Charles Linder - VESPERTINE

This piece/book, Vespertine, along with it's companion Mudslinger, is a glimpse into Linder's life offering us an illuminating collection of important moments within his artwork and along his path. In this river of images we can see where he trains his eye and we're given access to the fortuitous moment where his life flows into artwork. Vespertine is defined as being of, relating to, or occurring in the evening. The night captivates Charles –- it's engagements and unknown outcomes. This photographic document presents us with Linder's liminal mise en scene which are often, by design, fleeting moments which only he has witnessed.

In a recent newspaper article Linder said, "Lately, I've found myself more preoccupied with lifestyle than product. I feel fortunate to be able to live in a way where work doesn't necessarily dominate my life. I'm good at balancing work and play on a functional level so that it becomes effortless. With the adventures -- if I don't go on them... the work doesn't happen."

He seems obsessed with finding the physical proof of who he is as he wanders the American landscape digging for content. Like a self-taught archaeologist, Linder leaves no stone unturned in his quest to find meaning through personal experience. Of his 2006 piece, Ghostang, San Francisco Chronicle Art critic Kenneth Baker wrote, "Ghostang, is a bullet-riddled 1965 Ford Mustang body that Linder retrieved from the desert and powder-coated to preserve and revive it as an ambivalent object of nostalgia.. As a monument, it offers us symbolically the vanity of a gunslinger nation, in tatters."

108 pages, hardbound, 8.25 x 8.25 inches