Michael Thorn Bradley, presently living in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an artist who has investigated and mastered a wide variety of materials and methods in his pursuit of those transcendental expressions which manifest the perceptions of one individual's spiritual journey. His various improvisations incorporate not only his aural impressions from diverse cultures and geographies but visual influences which range from the prehistoric to the present. The content of his work is as dramatically divergent as the materials with which he works. Each medium evokes a range of idioms and metaphors which, in juxtaposition, allude to the dual nature of human perception. Alphabets, real and imagined, are frequently employed in his work. "My art," he says, "has always been an investigation, an attempt to balance inquiry with dreams, an attempt to illuminate the multiple arteries of visual and verbal expression."

       In search of metaphysical and graphic communion, he has travelled to (and lived in) many countries across the globe, including, among others: France, Mexico, Nepal, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, and Tibet.

      His photojournalistic diary Communion in Solitude: Mexico from the Corner of an Eye was published by Scrimshaw Press in San Francisco. This evocative depiction of the desert states and culture of Northern Mexico was conceptually unprecedented. Some of the images in this book are profoundly shocking, others are beutiful, and many are hauntingly surreal. Readers of this book can easily see the parallels to writers such as Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, whose investigative approach required both a complete immersion in and a solitary remove from the subjects they were addressing, This work is an incisive exploration of a foreign country which has not only influenced established photographers but but has served as a seminal example for a younger generation of artists as well.

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       One day last month, I asked him if his artwork was preconceived or generated spontaneously. He opened a box of kneaded rubber erasers. "My work," he said, "is, usually inspired by materials at hand. These are manufactured objects," he gestured, "identically packaged in duplicate, plastic, envelopes. I look at the material, the texture of it, and envision another scenario. Let's say, for example, a poem. " "A poem?" I asked.

   "This actually happened in 1993. I had just returned from Mexico, and was staying with a friend, the lithographer Ismael Orozco, owner of Baile Litho, in Chula Vista, California. Ismael and I had collaborated on an illuminated broadside, Ballrooms, in 1989. In Mexico, I was working on a series of graphite drawings of the rugged and arid landscape of Desierto de Altar in the state of Sonora. I had with me three boxes of unused kneaded rubber erasers like these.                                                         

     "After a dinner of pozole, I was rearranging the contents of my drawing box to accommodate the sun-bleached skeleton of a fruit bat I had discovered in Tecate on my way into Mexico. Ismael saw the boxes of erasers and opened one of them. `What!' he exclaimed, `you were anticipating many mistakes?' I realized that the removal of the three boxes of erasers would allow a secure placement of the skeleton. Without thinking too much, I told him that I had purchased the erasers in order to create a poem. Ismael and his brother, Hector, had consumed a fair amount of tequilla. 'Oh, I see' Ismael coughed, `an invisible poem!' `Precisely,' I said. Well, Mexicans are famous for their sense of surreality; so, naturally, they just howled. Anejo will effect this type of behavior. Ismael's wife, Leticia, entered the kitchen and told us that the children were unable to sleep because we were making too much noise. I suggested that we should move to the press room. Everyone agreed. And, so, taking the three boxes of erasers with me, I was teased by my delirious companions about the sexually active rabbits in papal attire which I had illuminated in our collaborative effort while creating the broadside, Ballrooms."
     

      "Anyway, in the odoriferous and somewhat toxic arena of the inks, I removed the plastic envelopes from the erasers, placed them symmetrically side by side, from top to bottom and from left to right, on the bed of an old manually operated etching press. Ismael asked me what I had in mind and I told him that I had no mind, that I was being ruled by rubber. `You are ruled, Miguel, by nonsense!' he exclaimed."
      

      "This is an example of how a simple work of art might come into being. I wrote the poem while the two of them rolled the erasers back and forth through the press until they had accomplished a unified, homogeneous plinth of rubber, measuring a 1/4 of an inch in depth. We left this on the bed of the press in order to determine if, in the morning, it would have retained its present form. Leaving the press room, I asked Ismael if his older brother, Octavio, was still printing pamphlets on a letterpress. The answer was, Si!"
      

      "The next day we transported the apparently stable plinth of rubber to Octavio's agreeable little shop. Ismael told him that, in this instance, money was out of the question; in other words, this would be a gesture of charity. Octavio began to laugh; he said that charity was reserved for the Church. Nevertheless, he agreed and began setting the text of the poem in a bold, upper case typeface. No ink was used, although he did spray the type with silicone lubricant in order to ensure a clean impression. In less than 15 minutes, we were examining the proof of Matamoros: the Unpredictable.
      

     The following morning we drove to San Diego and bought all of the kneaded rubber erasers we could find. Clerks in various art stores regarded us as oddities. One young woman asked what we were intending to do with so many kneaded rubber erasers. I told her that we were going to build a comfortable little palace for Ismael's parrot, Gabriela, who had consumed too much tequilla with her pozole, and was stumbling, dangerously, around a print shop somewhere in Chula Vista. 'How awesome,' she said, 'I just love Rad concepts!' 'Will it have windows?' she asked. 'Of course,' said Ismael, 'invisible windows!' Hector fell to the floor."

      We drove back to Chula Vista and, over the course of the next few days, a limited edition of 10 impressions was achieved. Hector, who was seperated from his wife and remained quite inebriated throughout this endeavor, insisted on calling them imbeddings, so we did. Ismael wanted to sell the edition himself. Something he had never requested before. We agreed on a price of $500 per imbedding to be split equally."
     

       "Early in 1994, I called him to find out what was happening with the edition. 'No mucho,' he said, 'as you know, dinero, like invisible poetry, is ephemeral. You may remember that I bought all of those erasers, and, por supuesto, I had to pay Octavio for his efforts. Lo siento, pero, I don't have any money to send you.' 'But have you sold any of them?' I asked 'No recuerdo...' was his response."
     

      "Well, a lot of talk seems to have been generated on the back of a spontaneous concept; but, at least, you have some sense of the manner in which I approach a work of art. "
    

       I asked him, "Can I see the poem?" "Actually," he said, "you can't; it's an invisible poem." "Then, "I continued, "perhaps you could recite it?" "I don't think so" he said, "the language wouldn't be admissable on the airwaves. " "Oh, come on, " I said, "I'll turn the tape recorder off. " "There you go, "he said, "silence is usually invisible" "But, what did the poem address?" I asked.       

     "It was a surreal homily on unpleasant conjugal realities and a relatively precarious border crossing. Matamoros is a filthy and immodest Mexican city and Brownsville, Texas- as you must have read- is a dumping ground. The journey from Brownsville to Chula Vista can hardly be described as engaging. It does, however, allow for some extremely abstract reflections."

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      Michael has a broad base of collectors. His works are present in innumerable institutional, private, and public collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. He has been commissioned by corporations and indivuals to create site-specific pieces ranging in scale from the intimate to the expansive His Houston Triptych; Fragments of a Storm commissioned by the First International Bank of Houston, was composed of three 7 1/2 foot by 35 foot canvases: overall dimensions, 7 1/2 by 105 feet. "Working with architects," he says, "has always been a challenging and joyful experience. I'm especially fond of my collaborations with Gensler & Associates, whose aesthetics are usually incredibly understated and elegant. Physically, I always feel very comfortable in their environments. The overall ambiance of these interiors are among the best in the world, so, naturally, I'm honored to have my atmospherics situated in such carefully considered and beautifully appointed spaces."

     He continues, of course, to create sculptures in wood, clay, and bronze, employing a wide variety of mixed media such as costume jewelry, bones, feathers, seed pods, shell, and fur. He is currently working on a new book of poetry, The Museum of Clouded & Cloudless Dreams, and is editing a series of his photographs of the Gypsies of Spain.