AMERICAN/ABLE: A Story of Naples

This commentary was written to accompany my participation in AMERICAN/ABLE, curated by Karley Sullivan at Kiddie Pool in Albany, New York, May 1–29, 2026.

https://www.kiddiepool.org/americanable

AMERICAN/ABLE is the first exhibition I’ve participated in that directly engages with what it means to be American today—an identity that feels increasingly layered, unstable, and defined as much from the outside as from within. The sculptures I created for this exhibition were conceived during my three-year sojourn in Naples, a period marked by both immersion and distance. In Naples, I became acutely aware of my American otherness—how it was perceived, projected onto, and negotiated in everyday interactions.

Fascinus-and-plantain-inspired sculptures.

Born in California and raised in Oregon, I traveled East to attend art school in the mid-eighties. After completing graduate school at Columbia University, I had the good fortune to be awarded a Fulbright Grant in Naples to develop my work as a visual artist. We were two years into the George H. W. Bush administration, when controversy swirled around the National Endowment for the Arts and its funding of prurient artworks. I happily absconded to Southern Italy, with its deep, multi-millennial connection to art and culture.

In June 1990, I arrived at the colorful and bustling Napoli Centrale station. After securing lodging in a working-class neighborhood nearby, I set out on an excursion to the excavations at Pompeii. This ancient Roman town, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, had been remarkably preserved for centuries beneath layers of ash. In 1748, Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples, ordered the site’s systematic excavation so he might recover artifacts for his personal collection.

Mount Vesuvius from the Bay of Naples.

I boarded the local Circumvesuviana commuter train and clattered past a string of towns clinging to the slopes of Vesuvius—places long exploited by the Camorra—before stepping off at Pompeii. Here I parted ways with Catholic pilgrims who were en route to pray at Our Lady of the Rosary and proceeded on foot to the archeological site. There I encountered an elderly foundryman seated behind a table covered with cast-brass reproductions of Roman statuary. Prominent among them was an astonishing row of erect verdigris phalluses.

These talismans were known as fascina in ancient Rome, from which the English word “fascination” is derived. They were named after the phallic god Fascinus and meant to embody qualities of fertility and vitality. Phalluses in bronze and ivory with such appendages as bird or bat wings and human legs were often hung in kitchens and bedrooms to ward off envy and evil. I later viewed a variety of these objects in the Secret Chamber of the National Archeological Museum in Naples and discovered that Sigmund Freud owned several fascina as part of his extensive collection of antiquities.

Seven Veils, 1996, digital collage.

My visit to Pompeii was decidedly fascinating. An art historian friend advised me to bribe the custodian in order to view “secret rooms,” so when I noticed a disheveled old man in a blue uniform and cap holding a straw broom, I slipped 3000 lire into his hand. Without a word, he extracted a ring of keys from his pocket and opened a locked door. Inside were frescoes of aroused satyrs, bestial acts, and polymorphous desire that would have outraged Jesse Helms and his Republican allies. Even the embattled works of Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andres Serrano felt subdued by comparison. I had crossed a threshold, leaving behind 20th-century America and its Victorian morality.

Fascinus from the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy.

For AMERICAN/ABLE I will exhibit three sculptures that suggest giant phalluses sprouting antlers or legs, crafted from heavy cast and welded aluminum. The pieces were realized two years after my return to New York City from Italy and their core elements were giant plastic plantains I found at a now-defunct surplus store on Canal Street. Though realized in the New World out of modern materials, these exuberant, expansive forms clearly derive inspiration from the fascina of classical antiquity, discovered by me, an American, in the city of Naples.