Riot of One
a Dirty Leeds Love Letter
I always thought that I wanted my artwork to take me places I wished to go. Not in a child like Shel Silverstein way, but as a vehicle to see and meet cultures while selling work. It’s worked too. I’ve sold in glamorous place, The Hamptons and South Florida and Vail. I have paintings in most of the fifty states.
I am not a wildly successful artist, but my work and life have true purpose.
Right now? I want to go to Elland Road.
I’m sitting in my newly launched pop-gallery in Downtown Lansing Mi. 5 hours behind my friends in Leeds, friends I have never met. I’ve been sitting here for 6 days and nights getting the paintings in order, adjusting the flow and marketing. I do shit like this. You don’t get half-pregnant if you want to bring something to life.
The work is tight, the paintings hang right, every thing is in order and the doors are open.
My biggest worry when preparing to eat and sleep in the gallery for a week? How will I watch Leeds vs. Man City on Saturday? Problem solved with some wifi and a trial of Peacock.
I hate soccer. But I love Leeds. I don’t miss watching...You dirty West Yorkshire Bastards may have saved my life.
The first thing The Square Ball ever taught me about English football, about life, was this: it’s the hope that kills you.
I’m an artist now. I wasn’t then. I was still figuring it out. It was 2020 and I’d spent five years getting ready to live off my art. I had fifteen art festivals lined up. It was supposed to be my year. I’d done the research, I’d finally started to find a style. I was ready to go on tour and make hay.
You know what happened. While you were celebrating a quarantined promotion back to the Premier League, I was losing my studio, my ability to sell work, and my contact with the outside world. Lockdown hit, and every outdoor festival I was counting on just vanished.
I killed the lease on my studio, turned our little garage into a makeshift office and studio, and started watching TV. At that point, my “Leeds awareness” began and ended here: The Who’s Live at Leeds 35th‑anniversary remaster. Banger. Legends. That’s it. I thought Yorkshire was some weird floppy bread my grandma burned every Christmas, not a place human beings actually lived.
Enter: Bill
I’ve always been a sports head. Toy hoop in the crib. Played college ball. Did some coaching. When I left the university world and became a chef, I still ended up tied to sports through work with Michigan State University: big school, big crowds, big basketball and football, and one of the most respected basketball coaches on the planet, Tom Izzo.
But watching sports had started to mean less and less to me. ESPN picked the stories and the angles. Everything felt political or packaged. Rules softened for millionaires or were twisted to sell some version of the game to advertisers. Sox and Yankees every Sunday night. The kneeling discourse. The same noise on repeat.
At some point, I realized the pundits didn’t know shit. Every time I turned on the TV there were six people yelling about something they clearly didn’t understand. They’d spit out these big dramatic what‑if takes. The next day, when reality made them look stupid, they just pretended it never happened and kept talking.
It was Fox News or CNN for people who thought they were escaping politics. Same crap, different logo. Manufactured outrage to sell gambling apps, pills, and insurance.
Going to games was just as bad. Especially my favorite: MSU Big Ten football. Constant stops and starts, TV timeouts, reviews (VAR), stupid prices. It seems nobody here respects a paying customer when a game is televised. They just make it louder and more flashy to distract you.
Covid made all of that worse. There I was, stuck in the garage, trying to get my overthinking brain to slow down long enough to figure out how to pull my head out of my ass.
Sports used to do that for me. Now I wasn’t watching. I didn’t stop on purpose, it just happened. And I didn’t miss it. Not even my school, a short drive down the road.
Enter: Luke Ayling.
Somewhere in there, it hit me: I didn’t just miss sports, I missed having a sport. I needed something to escape into.
Foreshadowing: Leeds United did not give me an escape.
I made a deal with myself. I’d pick two sports I knew nothing about and dive in like a newbie. I knew your politics were probably as messy as ours, but I didn’t know the details, and honestly, that was the point.
First pick was Formula 1. I love it. Now that there are three races in America, I love it a little less. But if a real American team ever shows up and gives me someone to root for directly, maybe that swings back the other way. Life is a paradox.
The second pick cost me my ego. I had every lazy anti‑football take in my head: flopping, time‑wasting, clock nonsense, all of it. I had to swallow that and move on. Now, I barely notice.
It was the start of the promotion season. With the new season just getting going, I watched seven or eight matches over a couple weeks, trying to find a team. Then: Leeds v Liverpool.
First, I had to figure out who was who. Which kit was which team. I didn’t know a kit was a uniform or a boot was a cleat. But once I got past that, one team on the screen just made sense to me.
They played the way I always thought sports should be played.
Fortune favors the bold. Do it to them before they can do it to you. Run yourself into the ground, force mistakes, make your own chances. It felt very American to me. Very Tom Izzo. Sun Tzu in cleats, I mean boots.
Marcelo Bielsa? Never heard of him. Some guy on a bucket, I think.
I only knew a couple of things about the names on the screen. Liverpool: that’s where the Beatles are from. Live at Leeds: still the best live album ever recorded. I knew Liverpool was the port where Brendan Behan got grabbed with explosives as a kid running around for the IRA. I knew Liverpool was a “big club” before I ever called a team a club.
What I didn’t know, yet, was how a club in West Yorkshire was about to crash into my art, my life, and my whole idea of what fandom is supposed to feel like.
My memory is hazy because I had no background in Football. I didn’t really know what I was looking at. I learned one thing that I liked. Leeds was fearless.
I chose my PL team in one half. I haven’t missed a televised game since that day.
My education about Leeds United football Club comes almost exclusively from watching games and listening The Square Ball. Mix in some Ger Lynch and Don’t go to bed, some youtube.
At first, between navigating accents and having no historical knowledge, I would catch about 40% of the Square Ball discussion.
Now I catch 80% of the words and 50% of the allusions and references. I know 100% that I will use Levi Solicitors for conveyancing (whatever that is) if I ever have legal trouble in the UK.
What caught me up? A little right back with a pony tail, seemingly hitting folks in the face and then flopping to win a free kick in our defensive end to relieve pressure. Yes, my favorite player is Bill. Even now Luke fucking Ayling captures what I like most about sports.
I loved that he seemed undersized, yet stuck his nose into every thing. Offensively Aggressive. Defensively relentless. Smart. But there was more than that: He seemed to play with the joy of competing, which felt missing in my life.
I was hooked…ALAW…MOT
The Michigan LFCU Supporters Club
It’s just me over here. Today is the first ever meet up in Michigan. Me and my Ipad and Peacock. It’s probably the first and last meet up.
I don’t personally know anyone who supports Leeds United. I don’t really give a fuck either. It’s seems very Leedsy to go looking for acceptance. Am I right?
The journey from that Liverpool game to opening this gallery has been arduous, painful and full of failure. As I come out of my funk, my purpose reproved and my work in sync with my philosophy of life I need to show you gratitude.
Thank you for being there every week to take my artist’s mind off of my troubles. Thank you for being tough and unyielding in the goals. Thank you for teaching me that hope is a pipe dream so I can truly appreciate the really good days and wins.
I am Marching on Together all my myself, but it doesn’t feel that way. I hope I make it to Leeds one day, singing MOT from the Kop.
Angels and Abstracts
KEUSCH
Angels and Abstracts
March 1 – April 1
The Snug Building
615 E Michigan Avenue, Lansing, MI
Jason Keusch is a self‑taught painter and writer based in mid‑Michigan. A former chef, he now runs his studio and pop‑up gallery under the banner of his newsletter, Million Dollar Garage. He has 3 goals: Go to heaven, So simple commerce and show people they are not trapped by this world.
ALAW?