A kind car salesman found our sketchbook. It is puddle-soaked and scarred with tire-tracks from its adventure into the city. Flap, flap, fly home.
February 22, 2010: the day our sketchbook took flight. I don’t necessarily want to blame Erin. But she did leave it on the roof of the car and then she did drive onto Old Seward Highway. Flap, flap, fly away.
We have officially begun experimenting with fiberglass and we officially have a lot of problems: the nose is too dark, the nose glows too much, the nose isn’t strong enough, the surface treatment blocks the light, the resin is blotchy, the LEDs are too expensive, the fiberglass smashes when I hit it with a sledgehammer, they all look like little dough babies, the urethane rips, the ply-o-life is too heavy, it pulls on peoples wrinkles and deforms their faces. Here is how it goes: idea->trial->failure->lesson learned->new idea->new trial->new failure->new lesson learned->new new idea->new new trial->new new failure->new new idea. And on. And on and on and on. Same old story of the->tortoise->and->the->hare. I freaking love it.
The point is: our ideas, concoctions, measurements, drawings and to-do lists are in that sketchbook. If you find it, give it back. (pleeeeeeeeease!) Also, here are some photos as we begin to learn about fiberglass…and an Andy Warhol portrait of Liv when she came to visit the studio with her brand new bleached hair. Blonde! Yesssssss! s.
On the day we were supposed to clean out the studio, we got distracted and took a bunch of pictures. It is weird to think that the walls are all WHITE now and that everything is CLEAN. Sterile feels so lonely sometimes, other times so fresh. Erin worked in this studio for 4 years before I came up to Alaska to work on our show last year. Over our year in there, the mess multiplied (and multiplied and multiplied…). I can’t really admit to it as our fault though. Things and stuffs had a funny way of breeding over night in that place. Paintbrushes nookied up with casting supplies, creating and procreating all sorts of little hybrid garbage babies. Sounds unlikely, I know.
A couple months ago we moved to a quonset hut in Ship Creek. It is an amazing space, with lots of room to rattle around. The messes are grander in scope and scale. They are the kind that require a Tyvek suit and big biceps. (I am working on that part.) It is all sososososo fun and good and right. But I just found these pictures on my old camera and my heart couldn’t help but pitter-patter. I know it must look like a shit-hole, but I loved that little studio in Spenard. So long dear friend. s.
We had a show at Neomutatis in Lima, Peru this December: photos, projections, and lovely as anything (and everything) people.
I met Marco Suenos, photographer and street-mural-artist-extraordinaire. I was sort of (definitely) star-struck when I actually met him since I had been walking around Barranco for days in a dumbstruck daze, opening doors like Christmas packages, hoping for a surprise around each corner, searching for more and more of his wheat-pasted photos. Most of his photographs feature the indigenous Peruvian population. He gave me one to put up in Alaska. s.
367 lbs of wax. That specific body of work seems so far away right now, the long days of summer were long ago swallowed by the darkness of December and now January. We are currently working with fiberglass and full bodies and two tons of steel. Still, these responses linger with me.
Our friend Amy is teaching kindergarten, she takes her students to coffee shops to meet with various artists. They sit around the boardroom, sipping hot chocolate out of 8-ounce to-go cups and pretending to be sophisticated. It is freaking adorable/hilarious. When they came to meet with us, we had a couple of wax heads on the table. One little guy said (with nonchalance), “Oh. I’ve seen those before.” “Oh yeah?” He went on to describe our entire show in alarming detail, “There was this video with all these colors. The faces kept disappearing…” “Tell us a little bit about the film.” “Well, I saw it like three times…sometimes the faces changed colors, sometimes they didn’t…” (A FIVE YEAR OLD WATCHING EXPERIMENTAL FILM IN A GALLERY FOR AN ENTIRE HOUR!???! most amazing!)
Which reminds me of another most amazing response: The Vietnam War Vet that told us that our video was the closest thing he had seen that mirrored the way he remembered his fallen comrades, how the faces were at once caught in a static and steady gaze, yet bubbling and emerging from nothing. How sometimes he wakes up at night and can’t get their faces out his mind, but then they leave him and they go to an irretrievable nowhereland, a beautiful and terrible somewhereland. When someone talks like that, you just listen with the knowledge that you can’t even come close to grasping the depth of their words, their experiences. There is nothing to say. Perhaps a soft nod. I know nothing about war memories, everyone I know grew up with soft toilet paper. There is no way we could ever statistically analyze, calculate, and orchestrate this type reaction. It was amazing to have opened up something like this and allow him to talk, express himself. People are so unpredictably amazing.
(This is our friend Lawre watching the video in the theater we built for the projection, I have always loved this photo of him.)
Sometimes this bloggy-blarggy ecosystem seems so voracious. Bloggers craving attention from clickers and likers and commenters like vines on a sun-starved jungle floor questing skywards towards the light, strangling orchids and bromeliads on their way up, up up! The internet has a funny way of taking over the brain and taking up way (way, way) too much time. It has felt nice to stay away. Instead we get to play in the studio and listen to music and make things. Pretty wonderful life.
But Alaska seems so far away! (Hello there, my dearest ever Seattle! Hi mom! Que tal Andy, todobien?) This blog is for you, dear friends in distant places. Thank you for being sooooo kind and caring enough to insist on keeping up. It is easy for weird trivialities like the miles that separate us or the unreturned phone calls to get in the way. Since you asked: here you will find pictures and stories about the Studio, the Art, and the Life in Alaska. It probably won’t be consistent or thorough. But it will at least be something.
