feather2pixels

Shit

Shit!

Success!

After eight months, the printing of this entire project is done!

This is the seventh and final piece:

Spotted in the mess hall at 07:25AM on a recent Wednesday:

On Friday I had a very impromptu opportunity, in the form of a CellSPACE Sew-Op benefit, to hang all my panels on a wall. A real one.

Once our renegade sewing group-in-residence, the CellSPACE Sew-Op is undergoing a reboot by Ariel, an energetic newcomer with a decidedly unCellSPACE-like sense of determination.  By sheer will, she arranged a lineup of artists, musicians, and DJs to appear at the warehouse to conjure $10 contributions from visitors.  The night before, she offered me a space to show and so I got the chance to test run this nearly done project.  Of course the wall changes everything, but I thought the stuff looked decent.

I was surprised how little I had show for eight months of printing.  There are four copies of everything, but the project still seemed a lot more ambitious in my head, I think.The next day at the Ocean Beach, I was reminded how a real artist executes the exploration of scale:

“Surfers and dog-walkers heading onto San Francisco’s Ocean Beach Friday found themselves in the company of 100 wooden Indians on horseback, with face-paint and feathered spears glittering in the morning sun. The life-size plywood cutouts lining the beach just below the Cliff House are the work of Western artist Thom Ross, who based the richly colored tableaux on a famous black-and-white photo of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show.” The Chronicle

This was impressive.  But the the pieces were a lot more interesting from behind.

Well that lasted a good four months:

Who is Jill?  Been thinking about that one for a while now.   Jill is the path of least resistance on a path that’s too long for the scenic route.  Jill is a steady exercise that builds a stout musculature in the tissues no one will care to notice.  Jill is a reliable intermediate between happy and sad where your headspace is actually completely beside the point.  Jill is an order of chicken tikka masala on a rail car to Delhi.  As you can see, all I’ve come up with are alternate lyrics to the 1995 Alanis Morisette embarrassment, “Ironic.”

I spend half my time trying to be more like Jill and the other half trying to be nothing like Jill.  Sometimes she knows before I even say the word and goddamit if she will always be a part of me.  Whether I like it or not.  She left San Francisco on Friday, possibly forever,  for the greener pastures of Chicago.  This appears to be a large city in the American Midwest.  With a minimum of adverbs (and with Nick T.), we unsentimentally sucked down one final beer at the bottom of Potrero Hill amidst subject-predicate-object conversation.  Jill is the opposite of so many people. All this is why I love Jill.

[audio:Alanis Morisette_Ironic.mp3]