So this weekend has gone well. The First Friday galleries were good. This is nearly the busiest I've ever seen the Starland community. I guess the advertising for it worked. Joel sent out a message about it to the entire faculty of scad. That type of situation might be odd for those new student who are seeing their first show in Savannah. It had the feeling of a theme park attraction. Homogenization. A mound of people waited and squeezed their way to get in. upon entering you were greeted by the first of many players that guided you through the space. They all wore white and had dust masks. Some attempted to speak in a very smooth tone of voice. One sounded very much like the "pleasant" voices used in futuristic films for the computers or other body-less announcements. You first walked up on to an elevated pathway. To either side of you were pieces of cloth stretched in weird way. On these, flashed rear-projected images, mostly of fifties-style advertisements with their emphasis on perfection and all. This pathway lust seemed like an extension of the waiting line. It might have been more effective if the crowd wasn't so large. But that waiting did give you more time to look at the video. The path descended back to ground level, at which point Joel greeted you. He met with each person individually. Some people were straightened, or checked over. For others he would grab you on both shoulders and lean in to softly speak words, like "happy" or "yum", into your ear. After that encounter you would walk through a giant tube-frame milk bottle. On the other side you were offered a small sample of milk. A player would then guide you towards another giant milk bottle to enter a back room. This was a long dark chamber that you entered from the middle and walked paths through it. Sounds of an improvisational rap poet filled the space. In one corner a mic was set up for the poet to perform live at certain times. at the other end of the chamber , an area was set up for the band ARTillery Punch to play too. You exit the same way you came into the room. You set your empty cups down on the way out in a hole built into the wall by the door. The last transition was a walk thorough another giant bottle, lying on it's side, split in half, to create a path. From there you exited off to the side of where it had all started. It all seemed very ambitious for this town. And if anyone can pull that off, it's Joel. He's an extremely smart fellow. I thought it turned out pretty well. I don't know if I paid enough attention to it to judge it too much. I'll have to catch up with him about it sometime to hear some of the logistics of it.

The other galleries were nice too, of course. At the first show I went to, Cynthia White's thesis, I ran into Allison. We got to talking, and one thing led to another and now she's my "mentor." Actually, she just needed to find an undergrad to mentor for her graduate painting professional practices class. So I don't know what that entails too much right now but I think Susan, wants to hit some of that mentoring action too. Alison asked me to help her build something, hopefully in time for exhibition at open studio on the 18th of October. We are reproducing a strange apparatus used to align the backs of scoliosis patients while a plaster cast is put around them to keep that alignment. We'll see how that goes. It's really hard for me to think right now. Lots of things getting in the way. Something just needs to happen. I think it'll happen soon though and that'll make me feel better.

And one last thing, I'm making a pie for my first screen printing assignment. I'm printing layers of a pie onto one-quarter inch Plexiglas sheets, then stacking them to create a 3d screen-printed pie. The assignment was to come up with something from the concept of "Tibetan Prayer Flags", our well whishes for the world. That makes me want to puke. So my pie subject goes for the same idea as a means of delivery of good tidings (i.e. "welcome to the neighborhood, have a pie"). But the pie is full of lollipops. Buried several layers into the pie is a printed image of a postit note. That note reads " Suck on it"

posted by cliff

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