Simon Says

Few things contradict common religious ideals more than a combination of cigarettes, alcohol, nudity and all-around partying. But that’s what’s been going on this week during Adoracion de San Simon, a festival produced by artist and snack-bar owner David Ford in honor of the so-called patron saint of bad habits. People have been offering their vices to sculptures of San Simon, whose origins are Guatemalan. “I’ll have a giant pile of sugar down there because I have a snack bar,” Ford explains. “And one person I know buys too many shoes, so anything she hasn’t worn in the past year she’ll give to Simon.”

But Ford doesn’t call such habits bad, and he wouldn’t label them vices. “I don’t make that Victorian kind of distinction,” he says. Instead, he sees the ritual as a recognition of life’s distractions.

For a shrine, Ford has set up a protein sculpture — one that features a real person. The man plays San Simon with his eyelids painted white so that when he needs to close his eyes, he’ll still seem to be paying attention. With people giving him things to drink and smoke, the actor might not be able to control how long his eyes stay open. “But he’s up for it,” Ford says assuredly.

This week’s observance should be tame compared to Ford’s exploits in the ’80s, when one of his performances brought the police and fire departments to his gallery. Ford has given up drugs and, since he quit smoking two years ago, takes hits only to light cigarettes for his various shrines. This year he wants to acknowledge his addiction to the evening news, so he will give San Simon his television.

Ford hopes visitors will make the shrine their own by adding things to it. “It’s very real,” he says, “and at the same time, very surreal.”