Raffi painted the original Sparkles image (on the left) for me in 2000. Leap of Faith was rehearsing for the 2001 concert Leap of Faith vs. The Fringe in Spring of 2001 at the end of the Archival Period. LOF on that night was the PEK/Lomon?Yuri trio – we played our typical hour long improvisation and at the very end of the piece there was a little bit that sounded a bit like really weird circus music. After the completion of the work, I said “The Fucked Up Circus Comes to Town,” which was recorded to the tape. Of course that became the title of the album, but then I needed an album cover that fit that title. Usually I accompany the abstract titles of our improvisations with abstract images that I create by manipulating fractal images in Photoshop. This Title called for something else.

Raffi was my housemate at that time as he still is now. He has a BFA in painting from Mass Art, a very prestigious Boston Art School. I asked him if he would make me a digital painting to use for the cover of The Fucked Up Circus Comes to Town. We brainstormed about what the image might show and came up with the idea of a Giant Evil Clown, rampaging through the Circus while juggling large circus things like elephants, trucks, unicyclists, etc.

After the big concert my work at the day gig started to become very intense and I ultimately withdrew from musical activity until 2015. When I returned, I reformed Leap of Faith with Glynis and Yuri, and the Evil Clown Enterprises was born for all the other projects. Since then Raffi has made several other digital paintings of Sparkles which include two other characters in his mythology… Sunshine, the Giant Evil Bunny and Lurky the Giant Evil Clown who lurks behind ginat things like the Eiffel Tower…

Sparkles is a symbol of Chaos… He stampedes through the circus doing his clown stuff, squishing the people… The people think he is Evil, but Sparkles doesn’t see it that way… He’s just doing his clown stuff… If the people don’t want to get squished, they shouldn’t go to the circus…