Phase One Complete

Recently, over dinner, my dear husband remarked, "You have been working on this project for two years."  I paled, I hemmed and hawed, I took several gulps of wine and acknowledged his superior grasp on the passing of time. Two weeks after that, I had completed the rest of the drawings. Initially, I was thrilled at the generosity of everyone who contributed objects to the project. Now I am further awed at everyone's kindness and patience. No one complained about waiting two years to receive their due consideration!

There are 51 drawings all together. You can see most of them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/losttime/sets/72157628783920231/

The best news though.... Tucker is going to put all the drawings into an ebook! So now, when I "distribute" the objects, I can leave them with a little tag directing the finder to  an ebook with all the images and values beautifully compiled. I am so ready for the next phase to begin!

I undertook this project wanting to do something big a la Shel Silverstein's Melinda Mae when she set out to eat that whale.

I tend to be more of a starter than a finisher. I am very proud of finishing this project. Much like Melinda Mae, it was a matter of placing my butt in that chair and tackling the project bit by bit. Also like the proverbial eating of the whale, it got a little disgusting by the end.

So thank you for sticking by me through the whining and procrastinating and stay tuned for chapter two!

I just came across this article on the  D3 arts collective and thought "Wow, these awesome people are working on a project a lot like mine, I should hang out with them." According to the interview, they formed their group in order to "study humans' attachments to objects."

They seem to be more focused on the disposal (distribution) side of getting rid of objects and more flexible about how they represent the object. In a way, they and I are looking at the same thing, from a similar perspective, with opposite methods.

Also, D3 is working on specifically "emotionally burdensome" objects. And I've ended up more with objects that people found to by physically burdensome but emotionally still relevant. 

Their archive is beautifully documented and reminds me a little of my favorite museum (The Museum of Jurassic Technology obvs) in its' riffing on collection and documentation traditions.

moving forward and considering distribution

So, the gallery portion of this project has ended and I'd say I am about 1/3 of the way done with the drawings. If you want to see my pictures of the gallery closing and pictures of the other shows that GATE opened you can look at my pictures on flickr. And of course check up on good old GATE to see what's new in the Glendale art scene.

I have slowed but not stopped and I am trying to gain momentum to finish the next 2/3 of the drawing project. I'm starting to get all excited about the distribution component. I just read a sweet little blog post about geotagging that got my bonnet all full of bees regarding how I will hide everyone's amazing objects all over my neighborhood. You can read it here.

two views of the eiffel tower; influences part two

While I was making this drawing, I was thinking about two things:

1. I really want to go to France, specifically Paris. I am completely jealous of the lovely and fashionable woman for whom this sweet little statue was a treasured souvenir.

2. From a wholly different angle, I was thinking about the amazing documentary Married to the Eiffel Tower.

This is relevant to the project, I promise.

The film explores the relationship between human and object taken beyond its logical extreme.

If consideration/distribution were a class, watching Married to the Eiffel Tower would be extra credit. It adds a certain layer to the exploration of the meaning of objects.

valuable things

This is a fun one. A friend submitted a receipt from a birthday dinner with the values of delicious things he ate and drank clearly marked in euros. (He mailed it from Italy-- exotic). Also included was a lovely story of the birthday evening and the photobooth picture of himself and his (beautiful) fiance taken during the festivities. So many kinds of value in one little envelope. Memories and euros and experiences and documents. This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to investigate.

every time

I have to admit, every time I am working on one of these drawings, I hit a spot where I think "This one is ruined. I should throw it out and start over." But so far I haven't done it. I just keep drawing until it looks okay, or I go to bed and look at it again the next day. So far, the ones I am most pessimistic about turn out to be the ones that look really cool.

influences part one

Maira Kalman. What can I say? This woman is a genius of the quotidian. Everything she does is perfect. I have imaginary conversations with her in my head. On the decision of what to draw, she explains that she looks for things that are a little bit funny and a little bit heartbreaking at the same time. I think she and I agree that that is where the spark of life's meaning can be found. By all means look at her blog for the New York Times at the link above. It will probably change your life.