Final Socrates Wrap Up

This is piece #1 around June 6th.I had planted almost nothing in this one, so in June I was pleased with all of the self starting weeds that had popped up.

Here is piece #1 on August 7th, some of the weeds had grown to be five feet tall.

Piece #3 around June 6th

Here is piece #3 on August 7th. This one started off with the most plants but a number of weeds appeared out of nowhere. Oddly, or maybe tellingly, the one plant I actually paid for (the bush on the right in the top image) is the only one that died.

During the de-installation process I documented the stratigraphy of the pieces. That pen was not placed there by me.

Destruction in progress

The scorch marks of my genius!

The sun sets on Socrates Sculpture Park, again.

It basically took two days to take everything apart which was far easier than the build. I learned a lot from this project and I met a lot of great people. I'm thankful to Socrates Sculpture Park for giving me an opportunity to work in a new way. Everybody who works there is super nice and really helpful. And thanks again to Michael Baumann for helping me build the pieces, I couldn't have done it without him.

De-installation in Process

The plant growth in this piece was unexpected and incredible, I'll post some comparisons later

I found this brood of spiders on their egg sack under one of the pieces.

I am trying to finish the de-installation this morning. I will post more about all of it later.

18 hours Left to See "Three Shopping Cart Situations"

I'm going down to de-install my shopping cart sculptures at Socrates Sculpture Park, I'm leaving super early tomorrow morning. I think it will take a day and a half, but god knows I've been wrong about the timing before with this project. I'm looking forward to see the state of the plant growth. Anyway, if you want to see it, you have until about 2pm Wednesday afternoon before I take a crowbar to it.

Checking in on my Socrates Pieces

There has been a lot of spontaneous plant growth in the first container.

The third container started out with the most plants and has done really well, apparently the lilac I actually flowered a couple weeks ago. I am really curious to see what it will look like 2 months from now.

This is a bit of trash that someone threw into the enclosure, it fits right in

The weather has been brutal on the shower board that covers the outside of the pieces. The caulk has cracked and let a lot of water get to the glue. There has been a lot of bowing (see above). I am going to go out there tomorrow and try to use epoxy to stick things back in place.

Rainy Lehrman

This piece by Rainy Lehrman is one of my favorites from the Socrates show. She made it by compacting layers of sawdust. It is strong enough to walk on but it will degrade over the summer, although I'm not sure what that will be like. I look forward to seeing the piece again in a few weeks.

Miwa Koizumi

I recently met Brooklyn-based Japanese artist Miwa Koizumi while we were both installing our pieces at Socrates Sculpture Center. I've since become a great admirer of her work, check out her content rich website. The pieces she made at the park, like the ones above, are fantastic re-workings of plastic bottles.

This hasty installation shot I took at Socrates does not do the justice to the piece. There are three drums in all.

Re-capping 12 days at Socrates Sculpture Park

The park had 3 tents that fit over my pieces, towards the end it allowed us to work through the night in the rain and wind.

This is me in the outfit I wore every single minute of everyday I was working on this project. And due to the fact that we were still putting trim on the pieces as the opening was starting, it is also the outfit I wore to the opening.

This is me drilling air holes (for the plants) in half inch Plexiglas at 3 in the morning

This is my friend Michael Baumann, I hired him to help me build the pieces. If I had not had him with me I would have been totally screwed. Micheal is an artist, DJ, contractor, handyman and a bunch of other things, he knows what he is doing when it comes to building (I don't). He stuck with the project until the very end, working way more hours than I could afford to pay him. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

This is Michael and myself at the after party in Green Point, we had both been up for two days and were deliriously tired. Michael was actually an hour or so late to the bar because he fell asleep in his car (not while it was moving). My lips were badly cracked from being outside in the wind for days, and the sudden appearance of the sun at the opening had given me a sunburn.

Hipsters chillaxin as the opening winds down.

These are Michael's dogs (actually the one on the right is Patricia's dog). They were on the work site with us everyday.

The Finished Product

I'm still a bit out of it from the events of the past 12 days, for last two nights on the project we went without sleep. I will have more posts about the past week a little later...

I got my dirt

My dirt

View from the roof parking lot of the Old Navy store in Astoria, Queens (or is it Long Island City? I'm not sure)

I got the top soil I need in a weird, Only-in-New-York kind of way. A guy who is helping one of the other artists at Socrates also works in landscaping, luckily, it turned out that he needed to get rid of several cubic yards of top soil from the Upper East Side, roof top terrace of a deceased opera singer. So we again borrowed the pickup truck that took forever to get yesterday, and made two trips across the 59th Street Bridge to get the incredibly heavy dirt.

The Long Build

The state of my pieces as of Monday (day four)

Jade Townsend & Michael Peterson, these dudes are ahead of the game

The view from the shore of Socrates Sculpture Park during Monday's relentless rain.

View of the congested BQE from a borrowed pick-up truck

For me, there is always a low point in the process of installing a show. Sometimes it comes when the opening is 24 hours away and it seems like there is no way I can finish on time, sometimes it is brought on by frustrating technical problems, and sometimes I just start to think that I am crazy for putting so much energy into an activity that is, on one level, ridiculous.

I have not yet hit that point in my Socrates installation, but yesterday was pretty frustrating. It rained the entire day and a trip to borrow a friends pickup truck and buy plywood at home depot turned into a five hour odyssey. I have a feeling the low point is going to be related to either the painting of the exteriors of the pieces or to the trouble I am having procuring the amount of soil I need to fill the boxes.

The Slow Install

I'm in Long Island City, Queens, building my Three Shopping Cart Situations pieces at Socrates Sculpture Park. Things are off to a slow start, hopefully today will be more productive.

Fantastic Damage

This is one of the carts I will be using in Three Shopping Cart Situations, my soon-to-be-built shopping cart installation at Socrates Sculpture Park. I love this specimen, it's an amazing object by any measure. Even though I have created a set of terms to describe shopping carts, when I look at profoundly wrecked carts like this one I always think of the phrase "Fantastic Damage" which is the title of Definitive Jux founder El-P's 2002 album. I wish I had thought of it first.

Stray Shopping Carts at Socrates Sculpture Park

Later this week I'll be heading to NYC to build three large shopping cart pieces at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. My plan is to re-stage situations where damaged shopping carts have transitioned to B/21 Naturalization. I'm going to build three 6'x6'x6' boxes, half wood, half Plexiglas that will be open to the elements and contain living plants. There will also be the kind of trash and debris you would normally find at such scenes. I am hoping that the plants will grow in and around the carts as the Summer progresses. The timing of this project is both good and bad, the fact that is overlaps with my solo show at Black & White Gallery (June 5 - July 12), is great, but getting both shows together at once is somewhat stressful. I'm hiring a friend to help me build the Socrates pieces (I have a grant that covers this), if I had to do it on my own it would take forever.

I've been checking out the work of the other artists involved, and it looks like it is going to a pretty cool show.