View current page
...more recent posts
I have two exhibitions coming up in October, and plan to use this weblog as a kind of "show diary." (I'll try to make it as entertaining as possible.) I've been leasing a studio in Jersey City since I joined the diaspora out of Manhattan a couple of years ago, and although I'm giving up the space soon, I couldn't resist participating again in the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour, which the burg puts on every year to enhance real estate values--I mean, showcase all the creativity in the community. Ironically, the city government has been pressuring my landlord to get rid of his artist tenants because we're "non-conforming users" under the zoning laws, and I should be boycotting the tour because of this. However, since I'm vacating anyway, I won't get on my high horse about the city's TOTAL F*CKING HYPOCRISY. Anyway, the dates are Saturday and Sunday, October 5-6, 12-6. If you're interested, take the Newark/Journal Square PATH to Grove Street and they'll have maps at the station. More on this as the date nears.
I'm also participating in The Freight Elevator Project 2, curated by Ombretta Agrņ, which opens October 18 in connection with the D.U.M.B.O. Art under the Bridge Festival (click here to see the e-card). I'll be installing a large temporary piece in a freight elevator at 50 Washington Street in Brooklyn, which will stay up for the three days of the festival. I plan to create a 5 X 14 foot "wall molecule," and one of my challenges is how to attach strips of pre-cut, computer-printed paper to the elevator's supersmooth, aluminum-clad walls. Yesterday I went in at 4:30 pm to do a test, mounting several strips of paper using different brands of double-stick tape. My plan was, since they close the elevator for the weekend, I'd hang the strips on Friday evening, then come back Monday morning to see what was lying on the floor and what wasn't.
I'd supposedly cleared all this with the DUMBO festival organizers and the building management, but it became immediately obvious once I got into the chaotic environment of the building's VERY busy end-of-the-week freight delivery schedule that no one had a clue what I was doing. The "test strips" must have looked like art, because they aroused immediate commentary and implied threats from the construction workers, delivery men and custodial staff who were coming through on the average of one every five minutes. I mean sh*t, these were just white strips and circles of paper with the words "TEST PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE" in generic block capitals, but for the half-hour I was hanging them I felt like Robert Mapplethorpe.
It wasn't too encouraging seeing boot prints three feet up the sides of the elevator, as if some testosterone-crazed nut had been in there for the previous three hours jumping up and down pretending to be Peter Parker. Equally troublesome was the quartet of construction guys, knocking off work and heading for attitude adjustment hour, who all felt like they needed to weigh in. The one with the thickest neck looked at the strips and said sarcastically, "I'm not even going to say anything," and then said: "You know, that paper's going to be up there for about an hour." "Yeah," said another, "See these boot prints? Wait'll that guy gets in here." They all had a hearty yuck. It was like being back in gym class. Anyway, I hung the strips close to the ceiling, above the control panel, in a kind of grid, thinking it might fool someone into believing it was a template for some new controls. One artist got on at the 5th Floor, where they have studios, and studied the strips intently all the way to the ground floor. (The finished piece won't get that much sustained attention!) And yes, like an idiot, I'm going back over there Monday morning to see if anything survived.