things to do, somehow

No google results found for "existential hang glider" (We will start working on it.)

Photographs of the Cabinet in situ...

Many thanks to the Collective's lovely Art Minion, Cynthia, for these photos!

Cabinet of Extinct Curiosities - full set on Flickr

Glimpses continue...

Still no photos of the installation in situ, but here are a few more Extinct Curiosities...

glowstick afterburn

This morning I carried a biggish panel of glowstick "stained glass" upstairs. After it spent a long weekend hanging from an open tent in a meadow, where it was treated to plenty of sunshine, wind, and rain, it still has that outgassing-plastic smell. I fear that if we do gradually add to the Glowstick Chapel until its walls are solid panels of passive luminosity, the fumes will prevent anyone from chilling out inside it.

A splendid photo of a creature I believe she created for the Cabinet, by the lovely artist Willow Dower, who ran the cyanotype workshop:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/salix_lucida/8072257582/

Art, and no fatalities!

The art installation at Playa del Fuego was a spectacular success. A whole lot of work, but the Cabinet of Extinct Curiosities came out just as I had envisioned it. AND we still managed to enjoy the rest of the festival! Home now, utterly exhausted, Curiosities snuggled safely in their cozy plastic bins in the living room. Dented and muddy rental van out front keeping me a tiny bit nervous -- it goes back in the morning.

I will post photos here as I get them from folks! Comment if you have photo links or feedback or want to connect. All the comments are moderated, so you can put your personal info in there & no-one will see it but the Dodo. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

P.S. I lost my top hat sometime Sunday night. If you find it I will give you postage and presents!

... And huge huge thanks to Mr. Darkness, the other Collective members, my Art Minions and the Coalition of the Willing. (I was so obsessed with the art project that I might well have fallen over dead if my Playa Mamas hadn't kept me fed.)

My camera is broken, but the glowstick panels are coming along swimmingly. We hope to obtain some photographic evidence once everything is built and in place at Playa Del Fuego. (If anyone from PDF follows our QR code/linkage back here -- hello! We'd love to see your pictures! Comments are moderated but will be approved!)

Preliminary Glimpses into the Cabinet of Extinct Curiosities

01. Entomophage Kangii

03. Hystricomorpha Philthocynia

sooo, this... is us?

We are ON THE MAP for the fall Playa del Fuego festival!

http://jc-news.com/Events/PDF/camps/

The Glowstick Chapel and its neighboring Cabinet of Extinct Curiosities will be in zone 2C. (If you want 2C them...)

Now back to actually working on building the art...

It's Started.

Benefactress!

We have received, essentially, a Matching Grant -- a lovely large check from a Grande Dame appreciator of the crafty arts! We are beyond thrilled.

(It's especially welcome given that the Playa del Fuego arrangement is of the "send us your receipts and we'll reimburse you after the festival" variety.)

Thanks, Mom!!!

Roffco Glowstick Chapel & The Cabinet of Extinct Curiosities ALL SYSTEMS GO!

e.f.a.c. has just been awarded a Large Government Grant... no, wait, we mean... a Playa del Fuego Art Grant, for the Fall Burn (Oct. 4 - 8, 02012) in beautiful pH-balanced Delaware.

WE NEED ALL OF YOUR:

-- spent glow-necklaces / used cyalume glowstix

-- plastic six-pack rings

Other bits we're also hoping to reclaim from the waste stream as opposed to buying new:

- rugs and meditation cushions (we can slipcover shabby pillows)

- fabric of all kinds, but especially black and/or velvet

- jars with lids; wide-mouthed glass bottles for Extinct Curiosities

- unloved spice racks

- maybe a spare tarp or two

Random bits of carnival-barker attire or related accoutrements would not go unappreciated, either.

Alas, that does seem to be how it works...

[NSFW] http://instagram.com/p/No0_m6M-Pw/

(If link is broken... it's a self-portrait of 2 people's naked torsos; the woman's says ART and the man's says NOT ART.)

(They are wearing stickers from one of Amanda Palmer's kickstarter packages.)

Strawmen of Summer

I've noticed some folks expressing their miffedness that "50 Shades of Grey" became wildly, mainstreamily popular instead of anything GOOD, so they have been making lists of actually well-written erotica, some of which may contain realistic characters and/or responsibly negotiated BDSM scenes. Nice little trendlet -- I enjoy their lists -- but I consider it to be misplaced miffery.

"50 S of G" is terrible, yes. It's gushy and sloppy and improbable and trashy and train-wrecky. I'm pretty sure that's WHY it's so popular. It's the erotic-novel equivalent of "reality" TV.

People LOVE "reality" TV.

I know several very smart people in real life who watch VAST amounts of "reality" TV. It is not because they don't have a convenient list of better ways to squander their time, just as I do not reach for the spicy cheese-flavored tortilla chips due to any lack of proper food in the house.

I do enjoy the lists, though, and have idly contemplated making my own, though I don't expect any hypothetical mainstream ladies to start taking Georges Bataille's "Story of the Eye" to the beach as a result. It's a tricky algorithm to fiddle with, because succeeding as brilliant fiction and succeeding as hot dithering material are not necessarily that closely related. There's some kind of Venn Diagram here, and to each her own. Bad writing will throw me out of the spank-bubble, but really good writing can too.

Anyway... it is summer, it is tremendously and preposterously hot in DC, and I have received a sort of reviewer's copy of Tristan Taormino's ULTIMATE Guide to Kink (they need to find some way to make "ULTIMATE!!!" blink in different colors on the cover), so who knows, there may be further discussion of writing-about-sex in this space in the not-so-distant future. Comment with your favorite or least favorite books about or including sex, if you so desire.

damn everything but the circus

Tonight there is a fire show in the courtyard outside Artomatic. If it is long and fabulous enough, I may not make it back inside to re-glow-light the Black Room, but either way, it will be all glowed up tomorrow for the closing night party. The Black Room is on the 8th floor, through room 802 - just behind Fr.Defenestrato's photographs and next-door to the Palisades Museum of Prehistory exhibit.

a Singularity worth comment

singularity.caseydriessen.com

I already liked him from his YouTube videos, but then while Casey Driessen was setting up, he played a tape loop of the sound of a fiddle being tuned.

Bonnaroo is a big commercial music festival with lots of dust and beer and HUGE crowds (50,000+ for bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers). So yes, I was predisposed to like the Casey Driessen Singularity just because he was a guy with a fiddle and some effects pedals and we could see and hear him and we were sitting on the grass in at least partial shade.

But also, he's REALLY fun. We caught over a dozen bands at Bonnaroo, plus bits and morsels from others as we wandered about; this guy's definitely a singularity.

He has a Kickstarter and I told him I would post a link. I didn't tell him no-one ever reads my blog. But the link is below, in case any of my dear friends want to buy me a CD. Also here is a link to the Sparrow Quartet (Abigail Washburn, Casey D., Bela Fleck, and Ben Sollee).

Fiddle/Sticks kickstarter: http://caseydriessen.com/about/fiddlesticks/

DC-ish locals: we are now hoarding plastic six-pack rings and spent glow-sticks for a future Thing.

Coming soon: Bonnaroo-related bloggery.

photographer?

I am going out of town for a week, but after that (last 2 wks of Artomatic) I really think I need someone to photograph me curled up as if asleep at the foot of IOM. (Or perhaps actually asleep. It does get quiet at Artomatic on weekday afternoons.)

flapping shadows of things to come

Against all odds, I actually spent a portion of the Artomatic "Meet the Artists" night near my art, being somewhat meetable. I don't think I met anyone who wasn't already at least acquainted with an acquaintance, but I had fun. And looked at a great deal of art, and met artists and ate their food.

Today I woke up very early with the excited burblings of ideas for future installations. A tattered tapestry cave at Playa Del Fuego... Something will happen, though usually not what was initially glimpsed.

A Mention

http://scrap-dc.blogspot.com/2012/05/artomatic-is-back-in-dc-have-you-been.html

Hallicipede Roadtrip

Here is the Artist Statement I wrote for Artomatic. I'm going to keep adding bits of content here throughout the month, and by the end of the show, I hope to have some good photos of my installation. If you found this page via one of my cards from the show, welcome! I'd love it if you commented!

Artist Statement

One of these works (SubMerged: Blue) appeared in the equally unjuried "Artomatic Takes Flight" show at National Airport last year. Prior to that, my visual art experience was mostly limited to festival banners and zines. My approach to sewing has been described as "non-Euclidean."

Impurity of Motives

I became enchanted with the broken umbrellas that appear in the gutters after each storm, their familiar shapes mangled and splayed. IoM's backdrop is largely umbrella fabric, and several of these works (notably the Hallucipede) contain umbrella ribs and wires, among other found objects.

The vulnerability and power of the human body interest me, as does the forlorn whimsy of our discarded belongings... how we, and they, endure & decay & are transformed. IoM plays with exposure and disguise, with deconstructed portraits of the artist, the synthetic vs. the organic, dream-imagery and the bad neighborhoods in the mind.

I sought lustrous clashes and interactions among salvaged materials: silica gel pellets from a shoebox dessicant packet gleaming like spider-eggs when drizzled in clear nail enamel. You will find bones, feathers, keys, bottle glass, and book paper.

I like art that leads us to view ordinary things in fresh ways. When I leave the gallery and step back into the open air, I find myself entranced by the colors and textures of everyday things -- a rusty newspaper box, an ivy-bitten wall, the sudden flash of pink from a lost toy in the grass. Perceptions merrily poisoned.

About the Extinct Flightless Arts Collective

EFAC made its debut with "Tastes Like Burning," a zine and collage-box assemblage created for the spring 2011 Playa del Fuego. Photography, mythopoetic & confessional text, found-object sculptures, and performance pieces are all in the works, all the time. We explore festivals and interzones, the circle around the bonfire and the trash-strewn brambles beside the train tracks. As of this writing, EFAC is still a collective of one, but We are accepting applications.

"Impurity of Motives" is all finished & installed at Artomatic -- ninth floor, space 187. From the elevators, head toward the Peeps but then make a surprise left turn just before entering the land of edible pastels. "Impurity of Motives" will be immediately on your left.

Clean lines, elegant simplicity, minimalism... these terms describe many of the lovely works in this gallery. The OTHER works in this gallery. If you wish to witness a louche assemblage of brain-tentacles, hallucinatory insects, and the tattered corpses of abandoned umbrellas, come visit "Impurity of Motives."

"Your exhibit is amazingly wonderful. It's back-of-the-wardrobe-out-of-Artomatic-into-a-strange-place wonderful." - Gordon Geise (Fr.Defenestrato Photography)

"Impurity of Motives" is shaping up nicely at the Aerie of the Flightless... here is a moment from earlier today.

Artomatic site selected

Artomatic site selection went swimmingly. "Impurity of Motives" will be on the 9th floor, SE end of room 5, just inside the doorway. The space is intriguingly non-2D, with angles and constraints.

Impurity of Motives

As we dance on the edges of our chairs waiting for Artomatic registration to open, here are a few glimpses inside the EFAC abattoir. Wait, I mean atelier. Probably.

GIRL by Dotti (1971)

"the fire of the transfiguring imagination"

E'ing as La Dodo (our Bloginatrix, thus far), I am tremendously psyched for Artomatic. It's big like Burning Man is big (if instead of giant sculptures and circus tents, Burning Man were a teetering stack of dioramas). (Yes, I grew up in U.S. public schools in the late 20th century; apparently the diorama is INTEGRAL to my image gallery.) Anyway, it's humongous and unjuried and that means there might be a place in it for me.

"The imagination can transfigure the dark matter of life... To recognize our shared, familiar misery is not enough. I want to recognize something I never saw before." -- Ursula LeGuin

Artomatic Returns to Crystal City in 2012: May 18 - June 24

EFAC WILL BE THERE.