When I was a child, every time I went to sleep with a fever, I had the same nightmare. I would visualize a large block wall. The wall would be shaking apart at an accelerated pace, faster and faster. It would never finish falling, just keep breaking apart, faster and faster. This scared me very much.

Finally, in my teens, I was able to take the acceleration from the nightmare wall and transfer it to an image of my motorcycle. As my vision of the motorcycle, accelerating under my control, went faster and faster, fear would leave me and be replaced by joy.

Destruction of the Nightmare Towers, 1977

Presented as hunting and sympathetic magic rituals, many of my works represent to society the nightmares they feel on a daily basis, things they come into contact with that frighten them, due to a feeling of lack of control over the situation. For me, these works harken back to the lessons I learned by conquering, controlling, and ultimately enjoying my childhood nightmare.

Destruction of the Nightmare Towers was performed before an audience at Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman College, Orange, California, on the evening of September 29, 1977. The towers, standing 4' high, were constructed of 1500 handmade, miniature bricks. The destruction was brought about by means of an artificial earthquake under my control.

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.3, no.4, fall 1983, p.235-7); photos from Shuler's memorial website.

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