2007. 

Mixed media, 14.5 x 11.75 x 3 inches.

"Epitaph..." poses a series of questions of identity, perception and perspective. 

The man behind bars--is he the enemy or is he the innocent victim of circumstances? 

Is he in prison?  What happened in the cheesy hotel room next door to him or in the saloon above?  Or are those bottles an apothecary of poisons used by the man in jail?

Is it the viewer who is really behind bars looking out at the man who is free to roam the world and partake of all its pleasures?  Free as the bird in flight?

The verso offers little help in solving the mystery.  A cryptic handwritten note, a man looking at the stars for an answer or more probably, spying into the windows of the crumbling building. 

Is the delapidated building  perhaps the same hotel as in the front of the cabinet? 

And who is the "rat"?  Is it the man behind the bars or the man behind the telescope?

The verso of "Epitaph..." is an homage to the Dadaist, Kurt Schwitters. He made 2-dimensional collages using only the epehmera of his post-WWI world (example below) 

In post-Apocalyptic WWI, the Dadaists in Europe and NYC declared that anything was art if the artist said so (e.g. Marcel Duchamp's 1917 Fountain which was a "ready-made" urinal seen below).