Steven Johnson Leyba - Surrealism or Sex-Expressionism?

Leyba, iz plemena Apaša, slikarski je trickster i šamanski vizionar-terorist. "Posljednji pravi slikar."
Napravio je i dokumentarac u kojemu face odgovaraju na pitanje što je prava umjetnost. Jako zanimljivo.
www.stevenleyba.com
leyba.tumblr.com/

FIRSET Monsanto “Code-HEX DEATH CURSE in Montreal as a BED-IN collaboration with Nebula X of thebellaobscura@gmail.com photos of by Serge De Cotret	MONSANTO Book 13
What Is True Art?	TRAPazoid GODSANTO Book 12

WHAT is ART? INSIDE THE MIND OF THE ARTIST AS THEY SPEAK THE TRUTH (FULL MOVIE):

Is a documentary by the controversial American painter/ writer/ performance artist Steven Johnson Leyba www.stevenleyba.com Defying the world's Post Modern premise that "everything is art" he not only dares to ask, "What is Art?, but he asks "What is TRUE ART?"
Scientist Howard Bloom (Lucifer Principle, Global Brain) says in the film,
"The first two rules of art and science; The truth at any price including the price of your life and look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen them before, then proceed from there."
The filmmaker Steven Johnson Leyba says,
"It's important for everyone to specifically state what art is because if "everything is art" then NOTHING is art. Even if when it comes down to one persons opinion or it contradicts others opinions or defies the "official" acceptable definition of what we are taught to always believe. Keep in mind that if someone says "THIS IS ART" and passionately says why it is it sparks others to do the same or to get upset about it. This is what art used to do, but now post-political correct speech all people ESPECIALLY artists are afraid to say what art is and to speak of what they are passionate about. I've lost many friends over this. The critics, money people, museums and art schools have dictated long enough what ART is. Now it's time for TRUE artists to take it back!"
While most argue no one can ever define art much less TRUE ART Leyba does just that. In the process, much to the disdain of others he creates a TRUE ART list and says TRUE ART can be mathematically measured (Golden Mean).
TRUE ART
Awareness (mindfulness)
Authenticity (genuine)
Intention
Action
Unique Markings
http://kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00X...
See More
— with Leslie Leyba, Stephen Kasner, Unspeakable Movie and 31 othersLeslie Leyba, Stephen Kasner, Unspeakable Movie, Barron Storey, Misty Gamble, Mark Bode, Maya Sinstress, Joel Butler, Katherine Copenhaver, Uglyartdolls Uglyshyla, Ugly Shyla, Steve Hapy, LaRain Ring, Howard Bloom, DeCoy Gallerina, Jeff A. Johnson, Marly Preston, Rik Garrett, Eric Cash, Eric Freeman, Pfirsich Malakatones, Jason Wade, Khristina D. Smith, Warsoldier Artworks, Meaghan Elizabeth Woodsworth, Sebastian G. Hyde, Kevin Evans, Nina Arlene, David Lamignan Larsen, Daniel Akzinor, Nnyxin Day, Melissa Hawrysz, Maggie E Copher and Raymond Lafferty.
Purchase DVD at http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00J...

In his words: 

To me the most personal creation is the most universal. Simply writing words is not enough. Books are a way culture preserves its history, but often times books used to control the ideas and politics of society; to restrict information. I seek to make books to liberate: that defy control, censorship and simple definition and depict life in its totality. I see my hand-made books as political reclamation of the natural world in its fecundity. I paint oil over acrylic over collage over anything I can find. I embellish the paintings with glass beads and organic material from the world around me literally putting the landscape and my DNA into the books. I have used dirt, coffee, hair, leafs, molasses, blood, urine, insects and anything I feel can give the book life from life. We are so used to having the synthetic and technological global culture define how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, our biology, and who we are, that when someone has a different point of view of the human experience and makes the commitment to put it in a book forever, it can be frightening and challenging yet very alive.
I embrace the reverence of the natural world that my Apache ancestors celebrated, one that focuses on the micro and macrocosms, nature, the reclaiming of forgotten and challenging symbols and all aspects of a life put into a book the moment it is happening.

Genesis P Orridge writes on SoLiteral,

…In spiritually volatile times such as this we, as a species, need to ask ourselves some searching and uncomfortable, even disturbing questions. The miraculous unfolding and ongoing survival of humanity against incredible environmental and climatic odds throughout the ages has been preserved, catalyzed, directed, inspired, mirrored and sanctified on our species’ behalf by the shamans, soothsayers, storytellers, sorcerers, wise ones, alchemical healers and (once upon a time) by the Artists of each age. These oracular beings fearlessly explore additional dimensions to those of mundane nonsensus everyday “reality”. They push the boundary of established social protocols, using the discipline of brutal self questioning to carry out an independent cultural autopsy on the often putrefying body of humanity during any given age. These courageous and often vilified individuals are essential to the psychic hygiene and mental health of the social order or civilization of their time.
As our ways of life have separated further and further from a balance with Nature, the role and prestige of these visionary gestalt therapists working on behalf of their community after an, often involuntary, initiation by near death experience, has been in decline. For around 2000 years these “creators” evolved from obsessed, possessed, magical shamans chosen by circumstance (not by self will) to artists still serving the Divine and the transcendental through the Church in the West and bureaucratic religions in general…

The Trickster's Koran is a fierce declaration of creativity in action, against a world of fascist trends, censorship, and oppression. It picks up where the Trickster's Bible left off, revealing a “Third Way” where people can be empowered to be creative agents in their own lives. This volume reflects our ability to turn convention upside down to reveal how ridiculous all cultures are so we never forget our instincts and never become slaves to dead ideas and beliefs used as modern control systems. You are the creator so create! Rather than have our hopes, dreams, sexuality and imaginations sold back to us by Corporate culture, celebrity culture, the Church, or State, it shows us “to create is spiritual” to create is part of the “human spirit”. A book of Art and Life in action, suitable for anyone interested in applied survival and creativity in an uncertain 21st Century. A never-ending book in it's third incarnation with new insights and elaborations of "The Coyotel Way" and "The Trickster's Bible."

Meet thee Reverend Steven Johnson Leyba
Infamous Satanic Apache Art-ivist
www.stevenleyba.com
www.leyba.tumblr.com

Featuring
Adam-Cooper Terán Coyotel Priest  live video mix and movie cut ups. Freshie Juice Coyotel Priestess of GMO, bodily fluids and ART DESTRUCTION .Spoken word of Leyba's anti-Monsanto GMO Death Curse. Live music by ROSENKOPF

With various cut-ups from films "UNspeakable; The Life & Art of Rev. Leyba" by Marc Rokoff, "What is Art?" by Leyba, "Monsanto Code-Hex" by Adam-Cooper Terán
Original art exhibiting Leyba's body of work, a live DESTRUCTION-spectacle of his own PAINings and a CURSE ON MONSANTO, Code-HEX IV. The first curse was performed in Montreal last year.

@ SPECTACLE THEATRE
9PM • $6
124 South 3rd Street, Brooklyn, New York

http://spectacletheater.com/


Leyba’s mixed media paintings utilize photographic collage, acrylic, oil paint, beadwork, as well as human blood. Using re-contextualized images of human genitalia he emphasizes aesthetic notions of beauty and the politics of sexuality. His hand-made fine art books which can weigh up to seventy pounds consist of bound pages of paintings on canvas. Two of his hand made books will be on display, Coyotel Book 11 and Monsanto, his 13th book in progress.

Leyba’s focus has been on GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD and is the subject of his current hand made book, spoken word rants and film project, PAINing POORtraits, with Adam-Cooper Terán, part of which will be screened with cut ups and live projections mixed with the documentary Unspeakable by Marc Rokoff and Leyba’s film What is Art?
The MONSANTO Corporation is the most hated company in the world, with millions in protest of its GM “Genetically Modified” food. Something like 90% of what we eat are GMO's and has been proven to cause cancer, liver and kidney failure.

Please join us in our DEATH CURSE ON MONSANTO. We will have a CURSE ALTAR that you can put your hand written, drawn curses on for Monsanto and its Genetically modified food.

 

PUBLICATIONS

In the tradition of the eccentric artist’s memoir like Salvador Dali’s Secret Life, The Last American Painter is a revealing and personal account of the life of an artist. Leyba is a painter, a trickster, a social critic, a controversial public performance artist and folk hero loved and hated by many. He unapologetically embraces the warrior philosophy of his Apache ancestors, radical sexuality, contemporary Satanism, revenge, the use of sex acts and blood rituals as well as painting with his own bodily fluids. Experience a life and world few could even imagine was possible. He takes us into his very personal yet public life and exposes the contemporary life of a renegade artist in a world that praises entertainers and ignores mavericks. The Last American Painter delves into the cultural fireworks and controversies over his art and life, alludes to various governmental investigations and political scandals including the "Apache Whiskey Rite", a whiskey-sodomy protest ritual that scandalized San Francisco

 The Trickster's Bible picks up where The Coyotel Way pauses, then runs off laughing. Includes paintings, drawings, photos, and examples from Coyotel Book of Days, The Trickster's Bible is a book of Art In Action, suitable for anyone interested in applied creativity.

 Celebrating the Native American trickster, The Coyotel Way is the foundation text of the Coyotel Church. Coyote, that foolish, playful, arrogant, oft-humbled, and beloved spirit is the perfect mascot for this age of consumer-illusion, media saturation, celebrity hype and material greed. The Coyotel Way describes a “Third Way” where people are once again empowered to be creative agents in their own lives. The Coyotel Way reflects Coyote’s ability to turn convention upside down to reveal how ridiculous all cultures are so we never forget our instincts. Rather than have our hopes, dreams, sexuality and imaginations sold back to us by consumer culture, The Coyotel Way reminds us “to create is spiritual”.

_____________________________

___The Angry Indian Priest's Satanic, Pornographic Coloring Book.



COYOTE SATAN AMERIKA Google books

“The Last American Painter; My Life as Sex as ART as RELIGION as WAR”

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“Sexpressionist Portraits”

Limited edition of 333 signed in artists blood with
original mini Sexgoblin painting contact $222 contact artist: leybaart@gmail.com 

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Featured in or wrote essays for
“True Blood” by Charles Gatewood (Featured in and has artwork in)


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“Stephen Kasner; Works 1993- 2006”

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Recorded music/ Spoken word Cd’s

“The Qlippothic Kommandos a Satanic Psyops”

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Steven Johnson Leyba/ United Satanic Apache Front
Addressing the Corporate Fascist State, Selected Recordings 1996-2002”
“Fuck Your Freedom”

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PRESS

On Wikipedia

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Articles about Leyba’s Paintings

Albuquerque Journal“Artist Rejects Removal of Controversial” Work”

New York Arts Magazine

“Is Burning the American Flag Constitutional?”

“How to Burn an American Flag” by Paul Sannerud

San Francisco's Top 10 Sex Scandals of All Time

San Francisco Weekly, “Anti-fascist Satanist, and a Raye of Hope”

San Francisco Weekly “Hemoglobin Goblins” Jack Boulware 

San Francisco Weekly “Night Crawler” Silke Tudor

San Francisco Weekly, “Slap Shots” Jack Boulware

San Francisco Weekly, “Twenty-two years of Satan in Popular Culture”, Jack Boulware

Featured in Charles Gatewood’s “True Blood,
Infamous Performance artist and “Apache whiskey Rite”
Front page New York Times

The San Francisco Chronicle

“Infamous Jack Davis Party”


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Written about in books

“Human Dignity and Contemporary Liberalism” Brad Stetson

Film Threat

San Francisco independent Film festival

Bad Lit

Indieflix

Unspeakablemovie.com

“Apocalyptic Cinema; Intense, post-Armageddon themes infuse the best of this year’s S.F. Indie Fest

Digital Retribution

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Other movies with Rev. Leyba

“Fear of a Satanic Planet”
“Sex: The Annabel Chong Story”

Steven Johnson Leyba

Who are you? Where are you from and where do you live now?
I’m Steven Johnson Leyba I live all over the world but I am currently living in San Francisco California

What is it that you do? What media do you use?
I paint, I write, I perform, I make music, & movies. I am a published artist and author with several books out. I have 2 cd’s of music and spoken word out. I am primarily a fine art hand made book artist. My medium is oil over acrylic over collage and I use, blood on all my works and sometimes other bodily fluids like semen and excrement. I paint biological forms so I use part of those forms.

What do you think sets your work apart?
My work is a layering of many meanings, symbols and forms mostly organic usually human forms and sexuality in a political context. I do not hold back on my expression and have been called the “father of Sexpressionism” but my work isn’t about human sexuality necessarily it is about the totality of the human experience about the physicality, spirituality and all that makes up our individual and collective biological life experience. My work is a ritualization of the totality of life and embracing everything to reach that witch is most meaningful. I would never call me work “erotic” I would say I paint biology in a new way to express what it is like to be alive now. Simply put I PAINT NATURE, I PAINT MY NATURE because I AM NATURE.

How long have you been showing your work for?  Did you have a “big break?” 
I first started exhibiting my work when I was 16 at the Arkansas Arts Museum and have never stopped, I’m almost 44 now. Yes when my book Coyote Satan Amerika was published. A book of my first 5 hand made books as well as many of my blood ritual political performances and my manifestos. This book put me on the map.

What are some things that have inspired you?
My biggest inspiration has been nature and especially human nature, magic and ritual, my heritage as a Native American and the belief in an animistic connection of all life. The early Surrealists inspired me Like Dali and Max Ernst, the abstract expressionists especially Pollock and de Kooning. William S Burrough’s “sabotage of control” theme of his work I have found very inspiring, the political philosophy and performance art activism of The American Indian Movement, The Black Panther party and Anton LaVey. The Satanic Bible and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” have had great influence on my art. In the early days Salvador Dali and his writings especially “The 50 secrets to Magic Craftsmanship”. It seems to me artists of today have forgotten that spirit of innovation, exploration and REVOLT in Art. I consider myself a sort of mad scientist of the arts and I believe it is up to the artists of today to create the great metaphors for our times especially in the age of potential ecological disasters and the new discoveries in Quantum Physics. While we are busy looking at our reflection in cyberspace some extraordinary things are manifesting within science. Being a good artist doesn’t mean worrying about your outfit or bank account it’s about contributing to the long history of art , philosophy and science and forging a new path forward.

What have you been working on recently?
I am finishing my 12th hand painted book “TRAPezoid godsanto CODEX Arlimentarius “ which marks a new level to my ART WAR. I feel the whole discourse in art has been stolen from the artists by the Art System (museums, art schools, art magazines, galleries and critics) and artists are supposed to shut up and do art and to never speak of what they think is great and what they think is shit. Postmodernism Art World’s term for almost all art today (and it’s a branch of so called philosophy and should be considered contemporary sociology) says, “everything is art” and “no art is better than any other art”. I say the “express yourself” generation needs some standards and quality control or at the very least TO MEAN IT. People don’t think artists MEAN IT or have TRUE PASSION and I’d have to agree that most artists don’t.
I recently finished my first movie “What is Art? Inside the Mind of the Artist as They Speak the Truth” and it is a direct attack on the one-dimensional view of Art. In the movie I create a TRUE ART list that has proven that there is a taboo around talking about TRUE ART. My new book marks the next stage of this ART WAR. The new book I am currently writing is “TRUE ART” (I need statements of TRUE ART from people for my book leybaart@gmail.com) Much of my new work is an exploration and protest of the genetically altered food we are all eating. It is an exploration into why we feel the need to change life, to change biology for profit and to focus on the fact these companies like Monsanto have waged a war against us and our bodies. We are their guinea pigs and we are eating the foods created by the same company that gave us DDT and Agent Orange and we have no say in the matter? And there are laws that make it a felony to speak out against this (“Veggie Libel Laws”). It is up to the visual artists to convey this atrocity. We need new metaphors and a new visual vocabulary to fully understand and process this biological attack and art can be a very good weapon against apathy.

Do you listen to music while you create your work?  If so, would you give some examples? 
Some say I listen exclusively to Billy Joel. He’s still one of my favorites. I like most Rock in Roll. Currently I am obsessed with and put on repeat “Hawkwind” and the “Yeah Yeah Yeah’s” I am obsessed with Karen O of the “Yeah Yeah Yeah’s” love her voice and lyrics. Recently I have put on repeat “Little Shadow” and painted all night while crying.

Do you do work in any other media? Other projects not necessarily related to your main body of work?
Writing especially aesthetics of TRUE ART and created a whole branch of philosophy I am still developing called “Coyotel”.
I never thought I’d be a filmmaker but somehow I became one. I’m working on my second film “PAINing POORtraits” I am an animist and I believe everything of life and spirit is connected so all of my projects relate. Recently I have been experimenting with stand up comedy and may do a comedy tour in 2010 called the “End of the World Again Yesterday”

What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?
You need authenticity. This is the age of the disingenuous. If you don’t mean it don’t show it. Give up the traps of “individualism” and “originality” it is a dead end trap of western thinking. Create from passion and from who you truly are. Once you do that your drive for exhibiting will give you motivation and energy to know and to seek out the very places you should show your work. Be TRUE to yourself and get good at conveying your totality and doors will open for you.

 Where can people see more of your work on the internet?
www.stevenleyba.com and you can obtain a copy of my movie on DVD at http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00JJPGLV and I am on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/steven.leyba
transmutearts.blogspot.com/

The Art of Rev. Steven Leyba - Sex Goblins by Maria Griffiths  BA (Hons)

About The Title

The title Sex Goblins recalls to my mind the poem by Christina Rossetti Goblin Market (c. 1850s). Christina was the sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She was the model for the Virgin Mary in two of his paintings, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1849 and Ecce Ancilla Domini! 1850 (Tate Gallery, London)[1]. In the poem Goblin Market Christina reveals the same Christian preoccupation as her brother in his paintings and indeed many of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The theme is of Eve and Mary, the woman who succumbs to temptation and the virginal martyr; the woman responsible for the fall of mankind and the woman responsible for the salvation of mankind; in short ‘evil’ versus ‘good’.

Goblin Market tells the story of two beautiful long golden-haired sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Laura is symbolic of Eve and Lizzie represents the love and sacrifice of Mary.

Goblin men tempt the local young maidens to buy and taste their magically exquisite fruits (better than any a human could grow). Lizzie the good Christian girl ‘veiled her blushes’ whilst the adventurous and curious ‘Laura bowed her head to hear’[2]. Eventually despite her sister’s warnings Laura succumbs to temptation and buys the goblin fruit with a lock of her golden hair, the feasting on the fruit is a hedonistic experience and the effect is like a life changing addictive drug (fatal in the long-term, perhaps a reference to the Victorian’s taste for opium?).

Laura ‘…Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red

Sweeter than honey from the rock.

Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,

Clearer than water flowed that juice,

She never tasted such before,

How should it cloy with length of use?

She sucked and sucked and sucked the more

Fruits which that unknown orchard bore,

She sucked until her lips were sore…’[3]

The imagery here is Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the ‘unknown orchard’. There is also the suggestion in the context of the poem, with the little goblin men who ruin a girl and the erotic imagery, of carnal knowledge.

The story continues with a Christian moral: Laura pining away to certain death until her sister Lizzie makes the sacrifice of love and goes and finds the goblin men to get fruit for her waning sister. She being virginal Mary refuses to partake of the fruit herself and resists beatings and fruit juices being squeezed into her mouth.

‘Lizzie uttered not a word;

Would not open lip from lip

Lest they should cram a mouthful in:

But laughed in heart to feel the drip

Of juice that syrupped all her face,

And lodged in dimples of her chin,

And streaked her neck with quaked like curd.’[4]

Eventually the goblins give up (she is so strong and pure!) and she goes home and tells her sister Lizzie to kiss all the juice off her face and lips. This juice is an antidote for the spiritually sickened Laura (the blood of Christ perhaps?) and Laura is healed and virtuous again.

What I find most interesting is the language and imagery of the poem with its sensual and erotic overtones. Perhaps she is imitating the erotic language found in the Bible’s Song of Solomon or perhaps she is unleashing slightly her own wild Eve nature and secretly enjoying it? I tease, I do like the idea of comparing a Satanist Priest’s artistic creations (The Sex Goblins) with that of an English Victorian Christian woman, however it is a fact that Christina was also an intelligent woman with an understanding of how men perceived women. In her other poem The Artist’s Studio she writes of the male artist’s stereotypical view of women:

‘A Saint, an angel every canvas means

The same one meaning’

It is his (the male artist’s) image of femininity, not reality, it is his fantasy:

‘Not as she is, but as she fills his dream’[5] 

We could ask whether Leyba’s Sex Goblins are his male fantasy, are they the creatures that fill his dreams? They would have to represent the daughters of Eve at the very least, those who succumb to the temptations of the flesh, the tree of knowledge.

Like Lizzie they also represent sexuality, they are femininity, they are made up of female genitals (literally), it is a significant part of who they are, they are woman.

Leyba’s detailing of genitalia challenges the audience’s preconceived ideas about what is acceptable as art. Why should one part of the human form be seen as ugly or sinful while others beautiful and idealized? Should artists all still think like the Victorian art historian John Ruskin? Ruskin was not exactly street-wise and his only experience of women prior to marriage was that of the titillating paintings of idealized female nudes in canonical history paintings that hung in art institutions and on the walls of Churches and the Vatican. In these the nude was always portrayed with no real genitals, often obscured by drapery or a hand (albeit sometimes suggesting masturbation) but definitely no visible pubic hair, for example Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c.1485). Consequently Ruskin never plucked up the courage to consummate his marriage to a beautiful young woman because she had disgusting pubic hair!

What is so unique about Steve’s Sex Goblins is they are not female nudes; they are women or the essence of individual women. Their individual genitals (all different shapes, textures and sizes) are part of their being and are shown as an integral part of their identity. This is not a degrading pornographic exhibition of women; this is an empowerment and celebration of woman, who she unashamedly is. This is Eve who has broken free from the Christian curse, or before the fall: Eve at ease with her nakedness due to innocence. It is a rejection of the traditional Christian view of womanhood; that a woman’s sexuality is something to be feared and therefore must be suppressed.  Perhaps the Sex Goblins are a pre-Christian Eve, the Pagan Earth Goddess. Whatever archetype the Sex Goblins represent you cannot ignore the eerily iconic image of individual portraits like Sherylin, Debbie and Chupa II. Perhaps it is the long veil-like hair that frames the face reminiscent of icons of the Virgin Mary but more than anything I think it is the mood they create in the audience. Debbie with her long golden hair and delicate anaemic features could be Christina Rossetti’s twin in

Ecce Ancilla Domini! 1850, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Surrealism or Sex-Expressionism?

Colour & Form

Sex-Expressionism is a term I have heard Leyba coin himself when joking about his art, it is however an interesting label or explanation. It seems to me that there is common ground between what could be ‘Sex-Expressionism’ and Surrealism.

Leyba’s art is Expressionism in that he captures the essence of each individual woman. Each Sex Goblin is very different, a distinct personality and individuality comes through strongly and they all have a different mood or effect on the audience.

This is accompanied by Leyba’s handling of colour and form. His use of colour is expressive and his paintings all have a harmonious blending of colour across the canvas. This strikes me as funny when on closer inspection of the parts of the image (rather than the whole experience) you notice the inclusion of genitals, such as labia’s for a nose such as Chupa II and Debbie. I’m sure Leyba enjoys this little shock, although to some Laura types I’m sure it would be mortifying. Here is Surrealism at play, juxtaposing everyday things together in an unusual way, challenging our perceptions of reality[6]. It is also perhaps the sex part in Sex-Expressionism.

Leyba is also a master draughtsman in his dynamic handling of line and form. The sketch The Clown, which is the opening image on his website showcases his ability in this clearly. The movement in the composition and line makes the whole image excitingly dynamic. It also recalls the curious distortions of Francis Bacon, the shape of the body parts make it look slightly un-human, even insect like. The Clown brings to mind the dancers portrayed by Degas yet this figure is sharpened, the line is hard not soft, this is not a fluffy little dancer it is a real body, supple and pushing itself to the limits. Leyba’s The Clown shows a wonderful comprehension of human form and line, almost anatomical compared to the strange distortions and impossibilities of Degas’ dancers. Indeed Leyba is neither Impressionistic nor Expressionistic in his handling of line and form; here is Realism, or the Surrealism of his art. This realism in handling line and form is clearly shown in one Sex Goblin in particular. In Monique (No. 4) Leyba creates a shallow pictorial space; Monique’s hand is parallel to the picture plane and draws us in. Her fingers are raised to her lips as if hushing the audience, her eye sockets recess deep behind her flat outlined spectacles.

Leyba’s line and form are not distorted but eerily the whole image is a Surrealist distortion or rather shift of perception, looking through a coloured veil into another reality, perhaps a deeper reality. It is the Surrealist technique of hallucinatory effects.

The fleshiness of the images reminds me of Francis Bacon’s handling of the human form. Both artists create uncanny and ‘meaty’ images (perhaps this is my vegetarianism coming through here?). Debbie has folds of fleshy genitalia around her neck, forehead and nose; their organic forms are both fascinating and disturbing.

Eyes & Freud

A common preoccupation with the Surrealists was Freudian theory and psychoanalysis, including the interpretation of the imagery of dreams. A reoccurring theme in their art was that of the eye. In the opening of Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), 1928, a film by Bunuel and Dali, an eyeball is slashed. According to Freud the fear of losing your sight really indicated the fear of castration, the fear of the father and the father’s vengeance on the son[7]. What initially struck me about the Sex Goblins was their haunting and eerie look, primarily for me it was that all of them lacked eyes, dark slits, the window of the soul is black, you can’t see in but you feel they are seeing out! Whilst it might be fun to speculate whether Leyba has a secret castration fear or a fear of the father (the Christian Father perhaps?) it is beside the point. The lack of eyes in his paintings are more Expressionistic than a Surrealist demonstration of Freudian theory. The black holes for eyes recall Picasso’s mask like female nudes in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 (inspired by African tribal masks). There is something mask like but equally tribal. The African tribal masks are schematic and in their simplicity of line and form they capture the essence and quality, it is a distilling to the purest elemental form of the being portrayed. This is what I believe the Sex Goblins are, they are distilled and elemental women, a stripping away of layers of perception.

Another possibility for the mask like faces with eye slits is the idea of scalping. Are these the trophies of Leyba, faces ripped from the skull with the hair still attached but the eyes missing? Is Leyba referring here to his cultural heritage as Apache or rather the myths and prejudices regarding Native Americans?

The Uncanny

The Sex Goblins can have a disturbing effect on the spectator; the missing eyes and fleshy genitalia all create an uncanny experience. We feel an initial discomfort on confronting these unearthly creatures. There is something primordial, spiritual about them and this is primarily due to the uncanny effect. According to the art historian Briony Fer ‘The uncanny leads back to the animistic and to magic’. Apache Religion is one of animism and maybe Leyba is revealing something of his cultural and spiritual heritage here. What is disturbing is the familiarity of these strange images (the primordial or archetype images they suggest). Briony Fer explains this phenomenon:‘The sense of the uncanny implies, in Freud’s terms, its opposite – the familiar repressed within it[8]’

Leyba sometimes includes blood and pubic hair in the canvas, this emphasises the flatness of the canvas. Some with an excited imagination could perhaps explain it as some kind of fetishist or voodoo doll type idea. I think primarily it challenges again our preconceptions of what is an acceptable art medium and what is not. It also echoes the fetishism that Surrealism explored. Dali in Scatalogical Object Functioning Symbolically (1931) creates an assemblage of objects: pubic hair, paste the colour of excrement and an erotic photograph are some of the chosen objects. Freud believed that ‘ a fixation of the sight of the pubic hair, which should have been followed by the longed for sight of the female member’. In Leyba’s Sex Goblins we are shown the female member, that desire is instantly satisfied.

For Dali (and of course Freud) fetishism involved substitution, a symbol; therefore artistic creation (the creating of symbols to be read) was not dissimilar to sexual perversions (for want of a better word). He wrote:

‘The incarnation of these desires, their means of objectification through substitution and metaphor and their symbolic expression constitute the typical process of sexual perversity, which is in every way similar to the process of poetic creation’[9]

Postmodernist

The treatment of the surface is Modernist in Leyba’s work. He draws attention to the surface, rather than allusions of pictorial space and tricks of perspective. The Modernist emphasises the two-dimensional reality whilst the Academic artist the three-dimensional. Leyba uses material other than paint to emphasise the surface of the canvas or illusion. In Chupa 2 he uses real rings in the woman’s plump red lips, her facial lips and labia have the same rings and echo each other; swollen lips being a visual sign of arousal in a woman. Alongside other material Leyba uses paint marks to flatten the canvas, red splotches of paint (recalling blood) and white scratchy marks.

The use of intricate beading and framing the canvas with lace and ribbon all flatten the illusion by emphasising the surface.

Such a formalist analysis of the handling of the surface gives us a Formalist art – Modernism, however Leyba’s art is not Modernism, it is Postmodernism foremost. Art historians debate what Postmodernism is, however there is a loose consensus that it is an art of critique in three main areas: ‘critique of the grounds of difference; critique of the myth of originality and critique of historical narratives[10]’.

Critique of the grounds of difference

 Postmodernist art is ‘engaged’; politically, socially and culturally as indeed is Leyba’s art. Leyba’s Sex Goblins with their inclusion of female genitalia as an integral part of the portrait, explore the question of gender – the critique of the grounds of difference. One could argue that certain features of Leyba’s art question the notion of high and low art, what is considered Art by the western canon and what is merely artisan craft? He uses delicate beading on all the Sex Goblins, their circular leather canvas framed with ribbon and lace suggest western women’s traditional crafts. The riveted punch holes edging them also recall an embroidery ring or perhaps drum skin – something other than the usual traditional rectangular canvas.

Many women’s traditional skills in the west have been devalued by the western canon of art; it is not deemed Art but merely handicraft. Leyba’s heritage as Apache is significant here too with the intricate beading that echoes Native American traditional Art. The Western Canon of Art made a distinction between higher Art (such as painting and sculpture) with the ‘so-called lesser arts such as the decorative arts, applied design, crafts and popular art’ [11]. His use of such materials in his paintings challenges our expectations and preconceptions of what Art is, how certain genres of art are deemed less valuable than others. Notions such as gender and race are tied up in this (the critique of difference). This is the Art of traditional Western female crafts and Native Americans. The juxtapositioning of beads, lace etc with the traditional medium of paint, forces us to notice it and find it strange. It is strange to us because we don’t see it as traditional art or what we expect, this reveals the prejudice and bias within the Western Canon of Art, it has excluded such art from that which is deemed edifying, noble and skilful.

Critique of the myth of originality

One group of New York artists who critiqued the myth of originality (the second sign of postmodernism) were those associated with the gallery Metro Pictures in the 1980s. Artists such as Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach. They were influenced by the ideas of Jean Baudrillard (1970s) who claimed that:

‘reality itself had disappeared, lost behind a screen of signs…..hyperreality…a sense of living not in a world of work, production and real things, but a world of representations, of consumption, of media images, of shifting surfaces and styles, a world in which the real has dissolved into a simulacrum….one of its effects is to blur the edges of fantasy and reality[12]’. 

Leyba’s Sex Goblins do blur the edges between fantasy and reality. They reveal a shifting surface as well as recalling the pornographic business machine churning out mass media images for consumption, where the female body is displayed as a mannequin in a shop window, made up of bits.

Critique of historical narrative

The third sign of postmodernism is the critique of historical narrative, the moving away from modernist theory and art practice. This is evident in the way that Postmodernist art is socially engaged, as opposed to Modernist art which according to the Modernist art historian Clement Greenberg, was non-political, with no message or narrative, art for arts sake. According to more recent art historians ‘engaged postmodernist art’ is ‘fundamentally predicated on a sense of its own moral security and rightness, as against the inequality and oppression it attributes to the dominant culture’[13].

Leyba frequently uses the symbolism of the American flag within his art e.g. Alexa and Renee.  The American flag is a potent symbol to the artist particularly in the light of his Apache heritage. He plays with cultural taboos in his use of symbols such as the swastika e.g. Barbara. Leyba is reclaiming the swastika as an ancient spiritual symbol, part of his own Native American culture, one that predates Nazism and outlives it. This sign or symbol has gained potency by people’s fear of it, yes people are scared of symbols and signs, symbols just like genitals can be taboo and Leyba’s art makes us question our cultural taboos.

The one double portrait within the Sex Goblins that screams out politically and socially engaged art is GeeDubya-Against Ya  and GeeDubya-For Ya. Unique in that apart from Leyba’s self-portrait Sex Goblins, there are no other men in the series as yet. George W Bush however has found a special place in the gallery. Perhaps Leyba is commenting on the President's perceived duplicity by some or specific American foreign policy perhaps? I don’t know for sure, it is up to the individual spectator to

Read and decipher the narrative for themselves. Leyba is exercising his right to freedom of speech and presenting within his art his social, cultural and political preoccupations.

Above all Leyba’s art is Postmodernist in that it demands an ‘active reader as opposed to a passive viewer’[14]. It can be appreciated and analysed formally, the handling of line and colour in the Goblins is aesthetically pleasing, the surface is emphasised and pictorial space flattened. You cannot however ignore the pictorial narrative, the mood and the experience, you have to think about the image you are being confronted with and react to it. It has a message and you want to decipher its code and signs.

Summary

How to sum up Leyba’s Sex Goblins? My statements seem full of contradictions but above all questions and hypotheses. Writing in the tradition of Social Art Historians like T.J. Clark who used Marxist theory, I believe all Art is a cultural product[15]. It reveals the artist’s social, cultural and political preoccupations and is historically specific. In a Modernist or Formalist approach I can argue for the aesthetically pleasing balance of colour and line and the flattening of the surface with real objects such as ribbon, rings or beads. Leyba’s Art is far more than that and such an approach wouldn’t do it justice, it is Postmodernist: politically, socially and culturally engaged. It shares roots with Surrealism and Expressionism but has sprung a strange unique flower of its own. I haven’t got a neat art historian’s label for Leyba’s Art because it is avant-garde; breaking new ground, for that reason alone it is something to get excited about.

Maria Griffiths has a 1^st class Honours Degree in Humanities with Art History and a Diploma in European Humanities (The Open University) .By default she is an urban English housewife. She has a Christian background although she is no longer religious. Her politics are to the left of the spectrum although again she does not see herself as a Marxist or a Socialist. She has an interest in theology and metaphysics as well as Art History and the Humanities.

[1] Lucinda Hawksley  Essential Pre-Raphaelites (2000) Phaidon

 [2] Christina Rossetti Goblin Market (c.1850)

 [3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid

 [5] Rossetti, C., The Artist’s Studio (c 1850)

 [6] Fer, B., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between The Wars, ‘Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis’ (1993) The Open University

 [7] Fer, B., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between The Wars, ‘Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis’ (1993) The Open University

 [8] Ibid.

[9] Fer, B., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between The Wars, ‘Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis’ (1993) The Open University

[10] Harrison, C., & Wood, P., Modernism In Dispute: Art Since The Forties, ‘Modernity & Modernism Reconsidered’ (1993) The Open University

[11] Perry, G., Academies, Museums and Canons of Art, ‘Preface’, (1999) The Open University

[12] Harrison, C., & Wood, P., Modernism In Dispute: Art Since The Forties, ‘Modernity & Modernism Reconsidered’ (1993) The Open University

 [13] Ibid.

[14] Harrison, C., & Wood, P., Modernism In Dispute: Art Since The Forties, ‘Modernity & Modernism Reconsidered’ (1993) The Open University

[15] Wood, P., The Challenge of The Avant Garde, ‘Introduction: the avant-garde and modernism’, (1999) The Open University

Black Magic Mirror

Steven Johnson Leyba by Stephen Kasner

Our world of latter day humanity is dying. The deathblow from self-inflicted disease, apathy, greed, sado-masochistic malevolence and earth-loathing selfishness can be felt from sea to tainted sea. Along our journey, we have become lost in the race for progress, leaving natural beauty, love, and purity behind in a fog of chemical dust and oil-soaked wings. It has become the job of the Visionary to not only peer into our future, but to also see today, now, us, as we truly are and what we really look like. This reality has been buried beneath the putrid rubble of television, advertising, labels, and a shit storm of fakery around every corner, in every walk of life.

The job of the Visionary, then, is a grim and vile one, and it becomes more so with each passing, weakening breath and depleted heartbeat of the collective unconscious.

Steven Johnson Leyba is a true Visionary. Leyba is among the bravest in fact, boldly uncovering both flesh and soul in a swirling cabal of blood, sweat, soil and semen, to reveal the true face of 21^st century lust. His portraits depict revelations of the individual, coveting that savage strength of sex and survival. His faces and bodies are wondrous in their honesty and radiate the intensity of The Beast within. But Leyba is more than just a Visionary. He is a warrior, a wanderer, a seeker and a finder of inner beauty of celestial proportions. 

Leyba paints with great conviction and sensitive consciousness. His will is not to depict blatantly negative images, which is something weak-minded art critics cannot seem to understand. His paintings are quite the opposite; these are the veneers of true spirit and individual strength. In his portraits, his shamanistic ability to unveil the self in its supernatural wonder is awe-inspiring and, in fact, truly dignified. 

Steven Leyba is the holder of a mighty magic mirror which only he possesses. When peering in, he offers the viewer a tremendous and singular gift. It is something only he can show you, and that is the face of one’s own true animalism and erotic passion, far away from the condemning clutches of priests and nuns, far away from churches and religion, far away from familial guilt or shame, down to the deepest dark of where you truly have arisen, and into the heights of where you may be climbing, knowingly or unknowingly. 

This is your face of fire and lust. It is your face that lies beneath the masks we are forced to wear, the masks which covers our thoughts and feelings as we walk among the dead.

Sitting for a portrait by Steven Leyba is a unique and marvelous journey, something I am proud to have experienced. There is a sense of nervousness watching the man prepare for your portrait. His spirit becomes altered somehow in the process, which is tangible and ultimately hyper-natural. You get the sense that he knows, and that soon you will know, a segment of your inner self that has been forever with you, but deeply buried. When Leyba paints a portrait, it is a significant rite of passage, for both the painter and the sitter. There is simultaneously a trust and an intense understanding that a part of each participant will be forever changed. Once he weaves his magic, there is no turning back from the force of the revelation. Once his gift is offered, you will forever see yourself in a different light. You are in some way freed, blessed by a sexual, Satanic liberation that can otherwise never find you if not by the strength of his brush and pigments. 

I hold my own portrait in the highest esteem. I am proud to have become one among the select libertines who has been bestowed by Leyba’s Black Magic Mirror.

The death of humanity hums. There is no stopping the now runaway train of people’s hate, fear and loathing. There are the few, however, who are capable of seeing through the congested confusion of what was once a clear and beautiful land. They are the new gods in this death-trampled world, and Steven Leyba marches among them.

Stephen Kasner is an artist who believes that symbols and ideas have the power to create balance and harmony between the competing desires of the human mind. His paintings move back and forth between acting as meditative focal points for the viewer and sincere attempts to portray the universal continuum of beauty evident in the cycle of life.

www.stephenkasner.com

BLOG.

 

Posted 3 months ago

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Posted 3 months ago

Posted 3 months ago

I AM A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
They say I’m a crankshaft sensationalist
A whiskey fucken Post Satanist
An exploiter without ethics
A man without rights
Under the U.S. Patriot Act
A domestic terrorist I am
Under Tits and Shit and ASS of T.S.A. and Homeland Security’s Corporate
“fear based” schizophrenia
Who commits the crime of or appears to
Intimidate or coerce the civilian population
Appears to Influence the policy of our government
I’M A TERRORIST
This I have been accused of
Without a trial or a lawyer on my side
This war on terrorism is their convenient criminalization
Capitalization incorporation of
A military complex in your home and garden
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
Cause I pay my Taxes that fund the atrocities
That enslave un-NATO countries
Tis a fact
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
Ya I once believed in “Freedom” the movie
Till the Council on Foreign Relations sold the rights
I’M A TERRORIST
Urgraphgonpaun
Bogpa sonf
Nanta
Spmnir llpiz
Rinmps Zipll
Thahaaotahe
I’M A TERRORIST
I love my country, fuck ya it’s entertaining
But the bankers and politicians that sold the American Dream killed my faith
I’M A TERRORIST
They made me patriotically obsolete
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
In the eyes of the law I am wrong for reminding you of the articles in the
constitution of these United States
Congress shall make no law prohibiting the freedom of speech or the right of
the people to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of griev-
ances
I have grievances
I’M A TERRORIST
Article four
About no warrants without probable cause
Search and seizures for no reasons
Just because
I’ve been seized
I’M A TERRORIST
Article seven
Right to a trial
No longer a right under the
U.S. patriot Act
I’M A TERRORIST
Well I do like to fuck your daughters and I’m the man in black
I’M A TERRORIST
Article nine
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed,
denied or disparaged - retained by the people
Wrong makes right
Under the U.S. Patriot Act
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m the people
I’M A TERRORIST
Constitution gone and the Bill of Rights
All abolished under the U.S. Patriot Act
But you didn’t notice because Dan Rather and O’Reilly would rather not say
You were to busy buying crap
If I’m not NATO American then what the hell am I?
I’M A TERRORIST
Not a Witch?
Not a Bitch?
Not a Whore?
Not a Communist?
Not a Satanist?
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
Cause Congress passed the laws that forbids my critique
And all the art and words I created are illegal weapons
Against the corporate fascist state
NAFTA-GAFTA WORLD CRANK of sodomy and Rape
I’M A TERRORIST
Say wasn’t an outspoken voice once
The American way?
And dissidence for the smart and the brave?
I’M A TERRORIST
They came for the drug addicts
With the war on drugs
Your sister Sue got sixty
You said nothin’
Wasn’t you
They came for the liberals
Without trials
Gave them anthrax
You laughed and smiled
Anarchists gettin imprisoned
For protests at W.T.O.
Didn’t like their simple answers
No government to make you buy
Never asked why
Microsoft Tea baggers killin’ Senators and Peace freak pacifist Unite in Earth
First Stock Market Warren Buffet delight
When they come for you
Do you think I’ll care?
I’M A TERRORIST
I used to be patriotic for speaking my mind and questioning
The establishment with my art
Freedom from expression
They told you I was wrong
Now that freedom is gone
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m a counter revolutionary against the corporatist consumer
Revolution you call evolution
I’M A TERRORIST
When I go to protests you say I’m just into hippie nostalgia
I know you say Kent state never happened, ya right
Never a man on the moon
Never any American Holocaust
Whatever
IM A TERRORIST
And what of the FBI and the CIA’s secret wars on the people?
The assassinations of JFK, Bobbie and Luther King?
See I believe Roosevelt let Pearl Harbor happen
Bush- Obama-Pravda INC plagiarized the same technique
Good for business- The Good WAR
An extraordinary rendition
Bravo
I’M A TERRORIST
Because they changed the law to silence us REAL
UnNATO Americans
Like they did Abbey Hoffman and the Black Panthers and A.I.M
I didn’t make this label
I don’t own the media
Write the laws
I didn’t define the corporate flaw
I ain’t no treasonous United Nations racist maw
I’M A TERRORIST
Urgraphgonpaun
Bogpa sonf
Nanta
Spmnir llpiz
Rinmps Zipll
Thahaaotahe
I’M A TERRORIST
I ain’t from a War Whore silver spoon family
A Bush family funder of the Nazi party in World War two
Ain’t no senators son….of a bitch
Buying all the water from every ditch
Ain’t no Abraham Osama Obama Toyota Corolla Ebola Madonna Lady Gaga
State
I’M A TERRORIST
Washington’s been doin business with dictators all my life
War is the business and where’s your belief?
I’M A TERRORIST
A people that would trade liberty for security deserve neither
Said ole Ben Franklin
I’M A TERRORIST
The banks should never have the power said Jefferson
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
I have the blood of the first American terrorists
Indians that held the original Homeland Defense
I’M A TERRORIST
Urgraphgonpaun
Bogpa sonf
Nanta
Spmnir llpiz
Rinmps Zipll
Thahaaotahe
I’M A TERRORIST
I love our flag, dead commies, my mommy, apple pie and Chevrolet. I like
tight pussy and a cock in the ass like any all American boy
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m a fornicating master painter- masturbator extraordinaire
Who hates the fear and fluff of our political sport billionaires
Info-taining us on Fox news and CNN
Beware
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m a Coyotel Cult preacher of street justice
I’d like to bring back Donald Dumb Fuck Rumsfeld & Mac n’ Cheese Cheney
and shit in their mouths
Teach ‘em a better way
I’M A TERRORIST
Those stupid fucken spoiled rich boys
Never worked a fucken day in their lives
I’M A TERRORIST
I’d like to take every CEO multi-national turncoat treason Motherfuckers
Fuck’em till they bleed to death
I’M A TERRORIST
My poor Uncle Bennie was a war hero
In World war II
Killed the Nazi’s not the Jews
They say I’m the Nazi
Red China Wal-mart bullshit buying communist
Enemy of the Corporate State
I’M A TERRORIST
Global Village Idiot Mac-armies of United Nations
Green Speak dancers on totalitarian stations
Carpetbaging rule abiding rebels
Michael Moore-Ons of sanctioned dissenter fashions
Alex Jonesing and Marylin Mansoning believers
But
I’M A TERRORIST
Could give a shit about oil
I’d rather fucken walk
I can paint with mustard, blood, spit and shit
I’M A TERRORIST
It’s not my problem
Neither left nor right
Not your lone nut “Catcher in the Rye” Lennon murder phony
Not a left wing nut or a right wing nut
But the uncontrollable prick in between
I’M A TERRORIST
Urgraphgonpaun
Bogpa sonf
Nanta
Spmnir llpiz
Rinmps Zipll
Thahaaotahe
Algebraic need of nonsense –Bread and Circus
Saint Joseph McCarthy’s gospel stillbirth majesty’s
Fistfully blows, half conceals, half disclose
Time Warner inside trading bread Monsanto AIDS corn GMO virus vulva
ala mode
Helter Skelter memories
Charlie Manson Classist war to come!
Red Scare rememberin’ Americans got a better weapon
Stop paying their bills by not paying ours
ZERO DEBT –ZERO PAYBACK
STOP BUYING THEIR SHIT!
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
Makes me wish ole J. Edgar, Nixon, McCarthy, Milton Freedman and Ronald
Reagan was around for hangin’
Like Mussolini and his bitch
I’M A TERRORIST
Geronimo, Wovaka, Crazy Horse, Peltier
My heroes have always killed cowboys
I’M A TERRORIST
Urgraphgonpaun
Bogpa sonf
Nanta
Spmnir llpiz
Rinmps Zipll
Thahaaotahe
I ain’t out blowin up buildings and choppin up kids
My mouth, pen and paintbrush are as loud as any of your guns
More dangerous but my guns fire too and they can shoot you
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m not the political choreographer way off Broadway that led  Archetypal
terrorists to fly mythical airplanes into symbolic buildings that killed your
freedom
It was your government that let it happen
Not me
I’m a creator
Not a destroyer
But I will obliterate what you want me to tolerate
I’M A TERRORIST
The War on the War on Terrorism is the war for me
I’M A TERRORIST
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more
fascist nation, abolish justice, insure domestic terrorism, provide for the
common dominance, promote the oppressive warfare, and secure the bless-
ings of disparagy to ourselves and our insanity, do refrain and abolish this
Constitution of the global corporate take over of these United States of the
world
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
I’M A TERRORIST
I’m a terrorist
I’m a terrorist
I’m a terrorist
I’m a terrorist
I’m a terrorist
I’m a terrorist

Limited 199 signed and numbered vinyl & CD NOW Available

Philadelphia book release, reading and exhibition

INVOCATION; CURSE ON CANCER for HOLLIE!  Listen to the radio broadcast!

PROJECT #9
Imagine contemporary compositions and precise words to express the collapse of the west, the end of the Western era NATO and the death of the United States. Melancholic, Baroque, political and current. Music of the collapse as it is happening before our eyes now and profound compositions from composer Marly Preston and lyrics and poetry I have written and spoken to accompany this dark and romantic Cinematalk soundtrack of the dark times we live in.
My first vinyl. Limited edition signed and numbered 199 LPsfor $99. Scheduled for All Fools Day release the “Covenant of The Blade” can be pre-ordered by paypaling leybaart@gmail.com

A living document of the artist, performer, and iconoclast, Steven Johnson Leyba and his body of work.

So you say You Want an Evolution?

 “Round up ready people

This war is internal

Against us all

Silent weapons of the quiet war within us

Genocide incorporate

Biological warfare we ingest

Reservations- concentration camps in our bodies

Each and every one of us

(Chorus)

Are you ready for the round up people?

For everything and all of us we are a changin’

For all our bodies developing

Every day

In every way

Growin in new ways”

                               -Steven Johnson Leyba “Round Up Ready People” from upcoming U.S.A.F. Album “Code-HEX AILMENTarius”

The world is flat again. We have forgotten what we once knew. No one seems to want to see that the world is round. One-dimensional minds and useless dead dichotomies subjugate all aspects of our lives. We are flat minded in a world with so much more possibility to be well-rounded living being. Gone are the days of critical thinking, debate, discourse, analysis, argument, questioning authority and TRUE DISSENT. WE ARE TO REMAIN QUIET, COMPLIANT AND APATHETIC. Where is the TRUE ADVERSARIAL SPIRIT?  We don’t seem to have any of it anymore. We think getting permits to protest and voting are all we need. We go through the motions telling ourselves we are alive and free when in fact we are dead and flat. Abolished are the possibilities for any ACTUAL questioning of THE OFFICIAL STORY. We fear criticizing the status quo will have us banished forever in the gallows of “conspiracy theory” and “alien invasions”. What this gives us is a world of STILLBORN culture for the flat one-dimensional minded “individual”. These are the days of the RULE ABIDING REBEL, the SANCTIONED REBEL and the copy and paste “free thinker”. No one seems to have a round enough mind to create a dialogue. The ever elusive well rounded mind is replaced by the Corporate global mind of the mass media and it’s sanctioned binary flat view of all meanings and all things personal, biological, sexual, political, scientific, mathematical, theoretical, philosophical, spiritual black and white and right and wrong. These are the Double-speak days of virtual slavery being; the actual volunteer slavery we have today. We have been captured by the modern Pravda Google and its “Cyber Cultural Correctional Facility” on the internet and in our mind. The “social networks” like Facebook and its “Corporate Mall Law” are setting insane precedence with what we know, will accept, see, feel, perceive and believe. No U.N. Constitution or Declaration of Independence to redress our global grievances. Most of our cultures, our sciences, our arts, our philosophies our lives are STILLBORN. In this “age of Reason” knowledge has lost its currency and validity because it is useless unless we experience it personally. A new dark age is upon us and we are too bored to see it. Bread and Circus has never been so all pervasive and all encompassing yet so dull and flat and boring, ones and zeros baby. We are all so well aware of what is actually going on that we don’t seem to care. We go along with any and every program and we somehow think it is the job of the Globo-Cop Multinational Corporate world state to provide us with our beliefs, perceptions and our contrived “alternative” “radical” “progressive” “lifestyles”. What Americans call the “American Spirit of Freedom” is now a corporate slogan owned by some company with their headquarters in Dubai. It was once a term for the human spirit or the pioneer spirit; the spirit of wanting to know the actual truth. Truth is not subjective but it is elusive and it is ever changing depending on its context. It is fluid like life not rigid and inflexible. We should be saying “THE TRUTH AT ALL COSTS EVEN THE COST OF OUR LIFE” , as scientist Howard Bloom has. We go along “PARROTING THE LINE OF THE DAY” when in fact we should  “LOOK AT EVERYTHING EVERYDAY IN A WAY THAT WE HAVE NEVER SEEN IT.” Free thinkers used to do this, scientists used to do this, artists used to do this, many people used to do this but now we need   permission to speak. One must get a permit to do anything and there are fines for everything. We have lost our ACTUAL LIVING KNOWLEDGE lived out of OUR OWN EXPERIENCE and we feel our reason to be alive is fame, fortune and buying dumb shit we don’t need. We swim amass the oceans of propaganda, POPaganda, Disintertainment and Irritanements of the so called total information “awareness” network of the “web” never questioning why? We all live in the virtual sea of disinformation and triviality of anything and everything and we have the diseases that comes with that. All discourse with others is reduced one liner smart ass  cyber attacks by our inner 7 year old. It’s not a debate it’s an insult we all use to squash debate. We all insult because we are all insulted. Crap is truly King and shit-talk is crowned the “official” language of this Twenty First Century. If language is a virus as Burroughs has said then we surely have the AIDS.

   What are the options and what are the cures? Is going along with the program the only solution? What can we do?  Well we can CREATE OUR WAY OUT.  People used to make stuff, they used to create things. We are blinded by our love/hate of the corporation and it’s right to make trillions and that some how gives them the right to govern governments and legislate new laws and we are conditioned to accept everything they tell us to do. These corporations spend billions on designing there magical sigils, there logos because they not only understand the power of color and design and brand identity but understand that humans think in symbols and these symbols speak to us directly and myth logically. They control us by controlling the visual language that is the landscape of our lives. Is that the only reality? When I made my movie “What is Art? Inside the Mind of The Artist as they Speak The Truth” I found out that one of the left over taboos from the politically correct era was that it is not ok to speak of art that you are truly passionate about. “oh no I don’t just like Maxfield Perrish I like Picasso and Mondrian, I like all art” Even artists are supposed to shut up make art and never speak of the passion of what they love to do and what art moves them. We are not supposed to speak of TRUE ART because that somehow implies there is actual FALSE ART out there masquerading as TRUE ART. Somehow this also implies there is TRUE LIFE out there and we are living a FALSE LIFE and well we know all sorts of ugly things happen to us when we try and tell others they not free. Our whole life is scripted and literally sold back to us so we pay twice for it with our money and our lives. The meaningless blanket term “postmodern” has created the propaganda that “everything is art” then the reality is NOTHING IS ART. Just as the blanket label A-D-D “Attention deficit disorder” is something anyone can be diagnosed with. It’s a blanket term for the fact our bodies and minds are in revolt against the waves of idiotic pabulum we are supposed to pay attention to. It is our instinct in revolt. Is everything they feed us even reality? Why do we adopt the official language of those that control the technology and how we use it? THE MEDIUM “MEDIA” IS NO LONGER THE MESSAGE. But we know that some art is better than other art don’t we? Or are we all Picasso? In the process of making my film I created a TRUE ART LIST. This list has gotten me many death threats. Always a sign I am on the right path. This list has given me a road map out of the Bio-hip slop sludge of modern meaningless meanings.

TRUE ART

Awareness (mindfulness)

Authenticity (genuine)

Intention

Action

Unique Markings

This list can lead you to trouble but it also leads to another path. The GREAT COYOTEL NO-PATH and that is YOUR OWN PATH. Joseph Campbell introduced me to this path many years ago,

   “you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.”  He also said, “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” We humans think symbolically and we feel a need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

    Refuse to purchase your creativity and identity from the Corporate Masters ™ and society will reward you with obscurity or ridicule, or both. Science showed our ancestors that the world was not flat but quite amazingly it was round. Many of them could not perceive and believe this so they did not perceive new possibilities for their reality and they were left behind on the old path. The ones that could conceive and believe experienced a change in perception and an evolution. For those of us who can perceive and believe new possibilities are living life that is not stillborn it is actually fluid and organic it is alive and breathing life. Anton LaVey once told me that a spider is being the best spider it can be but a person is not being the best person they can be.”  We are often times told what we are and that is defined by what we do so we are always doing but seldom are we BEING seldom are we BEING HUMAN.

Who are the TRUE EVOLUTIONARIES?  We are thee ones whom are taking back the language of our lives and manifesting living symbols in real time. We are thee ones on thee great No-Path. Thee great COYOTEL NO-PATH. There’s no path like a No-Path.

“Viva La Evolucion”

                               - Lady Jaye Breyer

 

RE: Spiritually RAW

I Spoke of my INTENT with the MONSANTO CURSE on the radio program “Spiritually Raw” you can hear the program here by going to the link and scrolling down to “THE CURSE”
 

“Anca Pathogen II” a page from my 13th hand painted book “MONSANTO”
If you are not familiar with the MONSANTO corporation, the most hated corporation in the world it can be best explained by this 11 year old. Millions actually HATE the Monsanto Corporation that creates the GM food we eat. Something like 90% of what we eat is GM food “genetically Modified” and has been proven to cause cancer, liver and kidney failure. Just last month a DEADLY pathogen was created in the process. Did you know you are eating a pathogen never before created? This is not a “conspiracy theory” and most certainly ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance of the subject does not make it UNTRUE. Please join us in our DEATH CURSE ON MONSANTO. On the first night we also ask that you bring dead plants and fruits and vegetables preferably rotten to help transfor the RITUAL CURSE SPACE into an ECOLOGICAL HELL ON EARTH!!

“Anca Pathogen III” from my 13th hand made book MONSANTO.
“Death to the corn syrup patriarchy who dare to commodify genetic code and sell us their poison for profit…may the gutless cancer filled demons they create rise up and turn on their maker like salmon returning to spawn. I want to see the soulless technocrats of despotic agriculture strung out on the piano wire of emotion and empathy until the music of their victims looses their automaton reflexive one dimensional fear filled minds to the sexy serpents of chaotic love” - Jay RubyLets not give thanks unto Monsanto for the ill will it has shown us!

A curse for Monsanto…………………….

WELL YOU TELL US THAT IT’S EVOLUTION WELL I DON’T KNOW!!

Rise spirit of John Lennon and return to us as fire and vengeance to
create a circle of whose end and beginning will forever be whose
insight and life will guide us against the multinational biologic
attacks within us. Help us destroy what it is Monsanto makes for us to
ingest. Eat it! Eat it! Just eat it! We will not eat it!

Ontasnom!
Ontasnom!
Ontasnom!
Ontasnom!
Hsirep!


               CURSED ARE THE G.M.O.’S WITHIN US

May they wither without us and within us and be shat out good
wholesome human guts…. once and for all

Ontasnom hsirep!
Ontasnom hsirep!


CURSED ARE YOUR TRANSFERS OF NATURAL OR SYNTHETIC GENES TO ORGANISMS
FOR PROFIT, CONTROL, SUBJUGATION, MUTATION AND GENOCIDE OF ALL SPECIES

If we are what we eat and we eat what we are then what will we become?
May your biologic weapons within us falter and fade!

Ontasnom hsirep!
Ontasnom hsirep!


      CURSED ARE THE INSANE MONSANTO TERRORIST
  LEADERS HUNGRY FOR POWER AND BLINDED BY THE
          DOGMAS OF THE BIASED CORPORATE SCIENCE

   May their biologic magic… mirror back and poison their minds,
   bodies and spirits until they subside and are absorbed by the
               nature of which they seek to conquer and destroy!

Ontasnom hsirep!
Ontasnom hsirep!



    CURSED ARE THE GENETICALLY ILL CREATIONS FOR
        YOU SAY THIS EVOLUTION FORCED DOWN OUR
        THROATS WILL FEED THE WORLD AND MAKE US
   NEVER DIE OH HOW YOU SAY THIS IS THE ONLY WAY

          May your corporate spin-doctors, your mad scientists and
        lawyers de-evolve with the copyrighted cancers you create!

Ontasnom hsirep!
Ontasnom hsirep!

CURSED ARE YOUR AGENT ORANGES OF INTERZONE  MYCOIDES, YOUR DDT
ARROGANCE YOUR PCB PATHOLOGY YOUR E-COLI DREAMS YOUR SYNTHETIC POLIO
VIRUS, BACTERIUM MYCOPLASMIC GENITALIAIUM, YOUR G.E. CORN YOUR B.T.
CORN, YOUR DE-NATURE, THERMUS AQUATICUS, BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE,
ALPHA-INTERFERON ROUND UP READY GENE GUN, BIO-TECHNIC TRANSGENETIC
RAPE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION AND
CONTAINMENT

May the spiral architects of the dystopic corporate biologic demise be
cursed for now and for always and in their endeavors may they
perpetually fail.

Monsanto will not set us free.
Curse-ed be.

Ontasnom hsirep!
Ontasnom hsirep!
hsirep!
hsirep!
hsirep! hsirep!

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT; TOTAL FOOD WAR

“You are what you eat, you eat what you are”
                                          –MONSANTO Leyba
“GMO LOVE SONG

No need to feel special baby we all have changed
Maybe it’s something we ate
All the chaos food
All we are we eat

NO NO
NO GMO

Can’t explain it
Biologic shit
Sex anarchic science trip
New predatory thang

You’re not who used to be
Baby you’ve changed
New growths in new places
Can’t explain
NO NO
NO GMO


All beings unreal
How do you feel?
New growing craze
Evolutionary phase

You say it’s a love song
Everything’s gone
Growing in wrong places
Science unsane

You say you love all the human sex
All the sickening soup
Genetic swoop
New holes in new places
Hips collide

NO NO
NO GMO

Is this really love
Of being and biology?
Everything spliced
Merged or replaced
Indiscriminate love
Irreversible love
Unexplained love of
All living things changed
Replaced
Growing in the wrong place

NO NO
NO GMO

Your love of all
New holes in new places
Looking for love in every
Cool scientific spaces

You’re not what you used to be
Baby you’ve changed
New growths in new places
Can’t explain

NO NO
NO GMO
Baby you’ve changed
Baby you’ve changed
Baby you’ve changed
You’ve changed
You’ve changed

               - Leyba for USAF “United Satanic Apache Front”(from
the upcoming new USAF album)


“KAREN O GMO Alchemical POORtrait; SUN” LEyBA

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY FEEDING US? What the HELL are we eating? WHY
ARE WE EATING IT? What are we becoming? If the food is mostly mutated
or spliced with trout, scorpion, e-coli or viruses are we MUTATING?
Everyday we hear about some INSANE Sci-fi sounding new biological
travesty or uncertainty regarding the food we put in our bodies. Like
vaccine corn that will still be a vaccine when made into cornflakes.
Excuse me? I don’t do vaccines and I sure as hell don’t want them in
my cornflakes. Now I am reading articles about how GMOs contain micro
funguses that are killing plants and animals. In America since 1992
most of what we have been eating is GMO  “Genetically Modified
Organism” Am I a “Genetically modified Organism?”


“BP-GMO II” LEyba, Steve Hapy & Anka Ragescu 2010
NONE of the GMOs we eat are tested or labeled and most of the
genetically modified fruits and vegetables in the super markets are
GMO and from the multinational corporation MONSANTO.  As a visual
artist I understand that humans think symbolically and are moved by
metaphors. So I ask myself why the multinational GMO Corporation that
gave us Agent Orange and DDT has named itself  “Monsanto” which means
“My Saint”. Perhaps in their delusions of grandeur of godhood (I like
to call Monsanto “gODSANTO”) that they feel like a saint simply for
recombining DNA and being the most hated corporation in the world.
That kind of “persecution” may warrant sainthood in their
megalomaniacal minds but in my mind they are lacking TRUE INTENT and
have a great disrespect of all life. What they are doing is taking
over the food source of the world and contaminating plants grown all
over the planet with their biological warfare.
   We have a right to know WHAT THE FUCK WE ARE EATING. As a visual
artist I wonder why there seems to be a great “BANKRUPTCY OF THE
IMAGINATION” in art and a complete pathological ethical anarchy in
biological science. I believe artists can and should create the
language, symbolism and metaphors of our times. Out of sight out of
mind most artists are ok staying out of politics and painting pretty
pictures for the fashion trends of the various marketplaces. Meanwhile
we EAT WHATEVER THEY FEED US. We are in denial of what it may do to
us. If in the end artists and citizens and consumers continue to be
silent and in denial with their heads in the sand it may very well be
to late when we collectively as a species figure out WE HAVE ALL
CHANGED. It may be too late when we realize what we have become. When
I got sick a year ago I am certain it was because of my diet of GMOs.
As I try and avoid the GMOs in my food I ask myself, “What is the food
doing to me and what am I becoming?”


“BP-GMO III” LEyba, Steve Hapy & Anka Ragescu

Rather than merely protest I decided to paint this experience and
embrace the TOTALITY. I ask W.W.G.D.? “What Would Goya DO?” How can I
paint it as I see and feel it? This is a FOOD WAR and the Europeans
call the Monsanto GMOS “biological warfare”. President Obama sued the
E.U. through the WTO to force Europe to buy and sell our unlabeled
GMOs and won. While scientific tests are being suppressed in the
United States in Europe the effects of GMOs on the human body don’t
look good. The silent weapons of this quiet food war are being waged
within us and we either sit in compliance, apathy, denial or we feel
overwhelmed, appalled and paralyzed.


“GMO III” LEyBa, Steve Hapy, Anka Ragescu

   I believe art can still create the symbols and metaphors to
capture the hearts and minds of the people to create the new
metaphorical art to help guide us out of this internal HELL we have
created. Just as Goya attempted to paint the “Disasters of War” of his
time I attempt to do the same and hope others will also.

Here are some of my attempts at painting the TOTALITY of what I am
becoming by consuming these manipulated and mutated foods that I have
let infiltrate my own body.

“Codex Ailmentarius” LEyBA