„The Love Me Or Die“ is a sculptural woodcut I created in 2017. It is loosely based upon a song by C.W. Stoneking of the same name (you can listen to the song below). The story told is about desire, love, betrayal, magic and evil. It is a the name of a voodoo spell - if you don’t love me I will put a magic voodoo under your floor and see if this makes you fall in love … or not. The result is in the title.
From the song, I am mainly quoting the part
„Standin in the weeds early next day,
I saw the meat wagon rollin away,
I seen Matilda layin in the back,
Her old mother wearin a suit of black“,
which describe the failure of this delusional attempt to magically influence true feelings.
It is not literally about the song, but what you can read between the lines - or the layers, as my artwork is built in multiple levels and set up like a theatre stage or a diorama. Everything is carved or cut out of wood, painted in different stages of the process and finally assembled. If hung of a wall, it stands out into the room (you can even turn the wheels).
For me, an artist who gets a lot of inspiration through popular culture such as music and film it is a wonderful thing to be touched so deeply by a song that it sticks in my head the whole time I spent creating an artwork. It is like a soundtrack in a loop. I even went and started playing it on the guitar and singing it - in my very own way of course, as there is noone I know who could possibly sound like the incredible Mr. Stoneking.
PS: There’s another, completely different angle to this piece of mine - it will also become the central artwork for my new „artist beer“ I am brewing up together with Oliver Wesseloh (Kehrwieder Kreativbrauerei) with special support by Scott Jennings (Sierra Nevada Brewery). After we released the first artist beer, „The Dirty Hands Of Alex Diamond“ in 2016, the general idea of the recipe is taking the story of my woodcut and the song into a drinkable version. We hope that C.W. Stoneking allows us to use the title of the song for the name of the beer. More later, once we get closer to the final stages of producing this very limited, special artist edition of a beer.
