HOPE IN RECONSTRUCTION: Ry Small talks 'Tsunami Gift - Shore on Fire'
- Shannon Rae Gentry
- Jun 27, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 16, 2025
Tonight, June 27 at Bottega, Ry Small opens his mix-media series "Tsunami Gift – Shore on Fire." His works will remain at Bottega until July 25. Small explains to Encore how he delves into gonzo journalism, emphasizing the integration of personal experiences and autobiographical elements. While Small's own transformative journey informs these pieces—he incorporates self-reflection and stream-of-conscious writing into the work—he finds universally relatable themes of devastating destruction and the hope in reconstruction.
From the Artist
With this series, I was thinking a lot about the ethos of new journalism—what Hunter S. Thompson called “gonzo”—and how artists like Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe inserted themselves into the story. It’s semi-autobiographical, right? Feet on the ground, lens turned inward and outward. Wolfe followed the Merry Pranksters on the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. They all embedded themselves in the moment. That got me thinking.
About eight months ago, I hit a kind of personal critical mass. I needed a life change. I started counseling, doing deep self-reflection—writing these long, stream-of-consciousness notes. Pages and pages about who I thought I was, internally and externally. The macro and the micro. My relationships, my place in society, the whole damn mess.
I started incorporating those writings into my art. I photocopied my notes—archived the originals—and noticed how, once laid out, they started to resemble buildings. So I built constructs with them. These little cities. Little universes. Over time, I realized I was making monuments. Celebrations of life. The good and the bad. Dreams. Memory. Reflection.
I pulled in lyrics, too—typed and handwritten. I use a typewriter now and years ago, I lost a novel by not backing it up. When we started our band (The Mysterious Bruises), I began typing everything, making copies so nothing would disappear again. There’s a rhythm to it. A meditative process. And I love that I can see the edits—the little Xs let me trace where a thought began.
There are all these stillborn poems, scraps that never made it into songs or stories. But I’ve come to believe they're “perfectly imperfect.” They still have a place. They still mean something. Even if I can’t finish them, maybe someone else can. Or maybe the unfinished-ness is the point.
That process—of archiving, assembling, reflecting—it’s a form of journalism in itself.
About the Work
“Tsunami Gift – Shore on Fire”
I originally wrote a lyric: “A tsunami is a gift when the shore is on fire.” That line stuck. The gallery shortened it for the show title, which I get—it's punchier. But the meaning's still intact.
To me, the wave represents upheaval—emotional, political, environmental. Something huge crashes in and wipes away everything familiar. That sounds bleak, but if you look closely, there’s treasure in the wreckage. There’s freedom.
We get caught in abusive dynamics—relationships, systems, governments. We normalize the dysfunction. Then one day, the wave hits. Suddenly, we’re free. Disoriented, yes. But free.
In that rubble, the vultures come—people trying to scavenge what they think has value. But they misread it. They overlook what really matters. And those overlooked scraps? That’s where I find meaning. The preternatural materials—the intangible things we can build civilizations on.
We can’t predict the wave, the asteroid, the collapse. But if we’re ready—or at least aware—we can rebuild. And if we do it together, maybe we catch each other when we fall. Maybe we create new cities, new universes.
“David Lynch”
One of the key pieces in the show is a large-scale work based on David Lynch. I painted it on the back of a 1970s photography backdrop—palm trees, probably used for glamour shots. I didn’t want to paint over anyone else’s art, so I used the reverse side.
David Lynch passed around the time I was going through my own transition. I started seeing the collapse in my life—ineffective systems, broken habits—and how, like in Lynch’s work, destruction makes room for new realities.
He’s a surrealist, sure, but his story is also American. He started in Philly, went to art school, found his style there. Then moved to L.A. I traced that arc across the piece—through cities I’ve lived in too, like New Orleans and Venice Beach. It became a kind of dream-map of the country. A fever dream of change—political, emotional, societal.
At the same time, I was going through a breakup. My partner and I used to collaborate on collage pieces. This marked a turning point—my work from here on would be mine alone. So the Lynch piece honors all of that: the end of one thing, the start of another. It’s heavy, but it’s also hopeful. Bright colors. Rebirth energy. There are scraps of personal artifacts embedded throughout.
"Message to Garcia”
One of my newer pieces is based on a book I found: "A Message to Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard. He was a writer and artist in the early 1900s. The piece itself is untitled but feels like a liberation prayer. It uses scraps from all over—song lyrics written with my bandmate, Zach Brindisi, early painting notes, pieces of love and hope.
There’s a woman in the piece—kind of a hybrid between Lady Liberty and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. She’s playful but powerful. She extends a hand to another figure drowning in a sea of context. She’s both guide and survivor.
At the bottom, I included the Lusitania. Hubbard and his wife were on that ship. When it was torpedoed, instead of panicking, they held hands and walked calmly back to their cabin. There’s something profound about that kind of peace. Acceptance. Not giving up—just…being okay with the end. Finding a home within yourself.
Final Thoughts
I think a lot about a quote attributed to T.S. Eliot—something like, “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
That’s the cycle. That’s the art. We return to ourselves with new eyes. I believe that the beauty, the true beauty, lies in the intent, the initial beauty and the lasting one.
