Artists keep sketchbooks. Mine, more than four decades' worth, are filled with visual shorthand. There are drawings and ideas for paintings, sculptures, installations - along with phone numbers, grocery lists, things to do, and of course, mindless doodles. I find critiques of my work, sometimes harsh, alongside welcome fragments of dialogue next to drafts and outlines for fiction. These hybrid sketchbooks/journals have recently, as if of their own volition, come down from a high shelf in my studio to a table within easy reach. From time to time, out of curiosity, I open one. The working drawings are viable, the rants at times amusing, but it's the vein of narrative that rushes up from the page like charged found objects that interests me most. When asked, I call what I do Hypothetical Realism. The places and things I paint are not real, but they could be. The same holds true for Short, Mean Fiction. None of what I have written really happened, but it could have. Like tales from the Old Testament, these stories are mean, rampant with sex, violence, and death. All are figments of an active, if not fertile, imagination and brevity may be their greatest charm. They are fictions through and through, and should a disclaimer be needed, consider it made. The drawings scattered throughout this volume are not illustrations, but live in the same place-the sketchbooks-where I first wrote the stories, forgot them, then found them again. To my mind, that's what can be trusted. As with painting, I feel little pride of authorship and make no literary claims for Short, Mean Fiction. For what it's worth, for better or worse, and to my utter surprise, there are many more where these came from. William Dunlap
About the Author: William Dunlap has distinguished himself as an artist, arts commentator and educator, during a career that has spanned more than three decades. His paintings, sculpture and constructions are included in prestigious collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Lauren Rogers Museum, Mobil Corporation, Riggs Bank, IBM Corporation, Federal Express, The Equitable Collection, Rogers Ogden Collection, Arkansas Art Center, the United States State Department, and United States Embassies throughout the world. He has had solo exhibitions at the Corocoran Gallery of Art, National Academy of Science, Aspen Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Western Virginia, Albany Museum of Art, Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Mint Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, to name but a few. Panorama of the American Landscape, his fourteen panel, 112 feet long cyclorama painting depicting a contemporary view of the Shenandoah Valley in summer and the Antietam battlefield in winter, was commissioned for the Rotunda Gallery at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1985, but since its debut has been shown in nearly a dozen American museums and art centers, its most recent venue being the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA. In addition, Reconstructed Recollections and In the Spirit of the Land are also exhibitions of Mr. Dunlap's work that continue major tours. Honored in his field, Mr. Dunlap has received awards and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Foundation for study and travel in Southeast Asia, Warhol Foundation, Virginia Commission for the Arts, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art/RJR Nabisco Visual Artists Award, and the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. William Dunlap has an M.F.A. from the University of Mississippi, and taught at Appalachian State University in North Carolina (1970-79) and Memphis State University (1979-80.) He currently maintains studios in McLean, Virginia; Mathiston, Mississippi and Coral Gables, Florida.