June 30, 2002 : world cup sundays
Brazil 2 - Germany 0.
You'd think that the football-loving world would grind to a halt for the final game. but seeing as how the game started at 1 on a Sunday afternoon, a partially-sunny Sunday it seemed very back-burnered. Of course in the appropriate countries they were all in a frenzy, but in the less-fortunate ones, it was just another day pre-workweek.
We started the morning off last night by crawling into heaven. We put on clean sheets and new pillowcases. Eva had planned on reading, and I had planned on keeping her from reading, and we ended up drifting off into a nice sleep. Though we woke up to our houseguests reading my diary and commenting on it outloud, "Oh look, ok, so that's the picture of the farm, and look, see she commented on me saying that they were co-dependant..." and a bit of muffled laughter on occasion. (this was more Jess and less Eric who i believe was half-asleep himself) And Richard, Ricky, Dick, Pricky, Rich Jr. (I don't actually remember his real name) was ambling around trying to drum up some spirit to hit the town. It wasn't going to happen. and it didn't.
Basically we woke up just to go back to sleep. We crawled out of bed to take out our eyes (contacts) and crawled back into bed. Not such a bad way to start the morning...pre-morning.
So today is the last day of art-show (if you could call it that). The last day of projecting stuff on walls and then the room returns to normal. I remember my last show, the one at Missouri Southern for my end-of-year/end-of-university. (for those of you who are wondering why I put university instead of college, as in Missouri Southern State College, then consider for a moment that the word 'college' here means something more like 'high school.')
Anyway, I remember my last show. I had the most brilliant of times. We were supposed to pick something around 12 of our best pieces and place them in our quarter of the room. I couldn't choose just 12, and so I just chose my favorite pieces and showed them all. I didn't really see a problem with it, I mean it was the only chance for some of these pieces to ever be seen (I don't even know where most of them are now) and so I thought they deserved the public's eye. Screen prints, mono prints, graphic design projects, drawings, posters, a website, and paintings were all evenly packed onto the wall or onto the table in my corner. Evenly spaced with nametags, my quarter of the room looked rather jam-packed, I must admit, but at least I thought it looked interesting. I felt like I had to be fair to my artworks--they deserved it after having invested so much time into them.
And a week later I got my one-page, seven-teacher feedback page.
I don't remember the specifics, but I remember them being pretty harsh. Too many primary colors, too many pieces from same illustrative "style" and how in several years the works would look dated. Precisely my point. The pieces were relative to this moment in my history only. I'll see if I can dig some of them up and put them here. I am entirely past those feelings I was working through. An unrequited crush on a girl, the concept of moving from student-land to real-world, and the turmoil most kids deal with when they are teenagers, and that I (being the late-bloomer) only dealt with while in university.
I guess you get the point.
And I had loved it. I felt as naked as a person could be. I felt clothes-less walking through the works and seeing people read and squint for details. This was my last 5 years up on the wall for everyone to see. I watched people move within it with carefullness and with thoughtlessness, a few were hurried, but most moved from piece to piece at a pace to absorb--my parents overwhelmed at the responses and the things themselves. "Who is this?" I am sure they were wondering...I had not kept them abreast of what I had been doing with the paints they knew I had or the paper they had seen stacked behind my door.
And so it comes to an end. An art-show. An exhibition. Blank white wall is returned to blank white wall, save for a couple of nail-holes. The projects I did this round were the most impressive once removed. In the darkness of the transmedia room they spanned entire lengths of wall and then unplugged, the room remained unchanged. Nothing remained. It was if I'd never even been there. That's a humbling experience.
So we unsticky-tacked 97 pictures and packed up the slides and headed home. Fresh with the realization that projections are the most non-threatening, non-damaging art-works I could possibly do, we'll see if they turn into something more. Stickers on lamposts, paintings on buildings, or even-still the non-damaging variety of projections in storefronts...something.
It's good to have something worth sharing again, something dying to get seen and or heard and then seen and heard.
I'll keep you posted.
IN THE NEWS:
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on June 30, 2002 that Americans should be vigilant for possible attacks around the Fourth of July holiday but that people should still try to enjoy Independence Day celebrations.
and like I said, Brazil won the World Cup, and Eva was all full of 'missing' South America. I asked her if she thought I would even LIKE Brazil. You know, you never know. I haven't really 'not liked' many places, though New Orleans would be a place I wouldn't really want to live in...but that was because I was 20 and my car was broken into. :)
She said, "Yes, I think you'll love it." And I'm hoping that she's right...seeing as how she seemingly left part of her soul on that particular continent.
