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WRITING  

Much of my writing came about from a job I had from 1982-1987 as an art-shipping truck driver crossing the country alone on a route from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Santa Fe, Dallas, Chicago and New York, schlepping paintings and sculpture between artists and museums, collectors and galleries. During that time I found photo to be the most flexible way to remain an artist every day, taking pictures every now and then but not putting me behind schedule any. Then, in motel rooms or out walking after dinner, I began to describe in writing the places where I was walking or looking. The writing eventually was compiled into a partly-published manuscript called MILEMARKER, while its short-paragraph style turned into fiction, to a degree, and found its way to the paintings, offering a verbal element layered over and perhaps contradicting in some way the visual element. In subsequent years I was able to write history "poems" for the city of Dallas, Texas, as parts of public art proposals.

• THE FRONT RANGE AND THE RANGE OF IDENTITY; Catalog Essay for "DECADES OF INFLUENCE / EXTENDED REMIX," Curated by Cydney Payton, Museum of Centemporary Art, Denver. 2007 pp. 50-52
  "Artist and catalogue contributor Jack Balas captures the boom mood in his poetic essay about being a laborer for hire. His description of driving across the country as an art shipper in the 80's expresses the increasing vulnerability of the artist through a portrait of the landscape. Looking in the rearview mirror suggests that the 90's represented the point of no return for the contemporary art world." Cydney Payton, Executive Director / Chief Curator, MoCA Denver.
  
• DUSK AND MAGNETS: ON BECOMING THE BUCKEYE HIGHWAY
  
• MILEMARKER: AN INTRODUCTION
  
• from MileMarker: Late Summer, 1960
  
• from MileMarker: I Used to Write on Envelopes
  
• from MileMarker: If He Had Asked Me...
  
• My Mount Rushmore
  
  
  
• LISBON, TEXAS: 150 YEARS
  
• LOVERS LANE, DALLAS c. 1889-1911