winter graffiti

the windshield wipers screeched across my eyes passing grey skies and blank landscapes of already harvested corn and trees with leaves already blown away.  and cop after cop after cop.  indiana in late november.  ugly. or beautiful. but nothing in between.  in indy we hit a piece of cardboard on the road that was unavoidable.  it ripped the turn signal off our trusty volvo with 150k miles.  so sad to see our jack get his eye punched out by indiana's hazardously shitty roads.  this was driving to louisville in the rain.

we installed my 2D installation winter graffiti at Heine Brothers Coffee off of Westport Rd. in Louisville.  we met Ann from the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft at the coffee shop around 1pm to begin install.  she was already there and hanging the other artist's fabric work.  we walked passed her not even paying attention and then had one of those awkward 'oh, wait, there you are' moments.  i forgot to bring my drill, so i had to make a run to a home depot, bought a set of drill bits, and made my way back to Heine's.  i drilled holes in my crusty, rusty, white washed metal panels and screwed them into the wall. as i began to magnet the 75 printed cards to the panels, mindy stopped me, "wait, i have the ipad in the car, wanna film the install?" "YEAH!" i responded.  so i took down all the cards i'd already put up and mindy ran out to get the ipad. then we started again.  one card at a time.  one magnet at a time.  the piece slowly came into view.  each card is an individual print, but 75 together create a snowing winter scene.  and the magnets are porcelain snowflakes.  card. magnet. card. magnet. card. magnet. magnet. card. magnet. magnet.

                                               

last thursday, when i finished printing the cards, i haphazardly laid out the piece on the garage floor, but without the magnets, and it felt a bit scatterbrained.  but after installing and getting the 148 magnets on top of the cards, i really like the result.  the piece feels different from different perspectives.  from far, it looks like a snowing scene, but up close, you can see all the different magnets, and all the different images and colors.  we priced the prints and magnets to sell, and my hope is that people will buy and take, and watch the piece change as elements disappear.  the work will be featured through february.

details of winter graffiti

we decided on the title winter graffiti after much discussion around what to call it.  i hate titling work.  the reason i make it is, typically, because i have no words for what i'm trying to make.  i've never titled a piece prior to making it; only after it's finished, been lying around, and collecting dust.  it is a very rhythmic piece, so we tried to title it something that had to do with music, but it wasn't working.  in the end, we considered the impermanence of the piece, the multiple elements, and the 'quick-pop-up' nature of installing this piece and decided it had a spirit of street art in it.  and by titling it 'winter graffiti' we thought the words would help people to notice, literally or metaphorically, the elements we wanted to draw attention to.

after installing winter graffiti, and it took all of 15 minutes, we installed 5 framed prints, from the series i just completed.  fellow indiana artisan, brian gordy and gordy's fine art and framing in muncie, did a fabulous job framing the work.  the delicacy of the paper and the images and inks are really set off by the short-matted black framing.  the pieces pop off the grey wall at Heine Bros.  the cool thing for me about showing at Heine Bros (as i don't normally hang work in retail shops) is that they feature my mugs in each of their stores in the louisville area.  They also work closely with KMAC to provide fabulous artwork for all their locations.  so i also delivered a new round of mugs to Heine Bros, to restock for the holidays.  i couldn't promise to have all the mugs made and delievered by thanksgiving, but i received the order, processed it, made a shit ton of mugs, and got everything made and through the kilns in 8 days.  i've never done that before.  needless to say.  i'm tired.  mindy was there to help me print and glaze, which is the only reason i got all this done in 8 days.  but after all the hard work, it was great to get to see it all come together.

over a hundred mugs ... 96 to Heine, others are custom orders from Etsy

then we found a sushi place, Mikato, that was open at 4 in the afternoon and ate lunch/dinner.  it was super cheap and the fish was melt-in-your-mouth delicious.  $55 for 12 nigiri, 1 normal roll, 1 roll that was a meal in-and-of itself, 2 salads, awesomely huge fried calamari, and a freshly made mochi with red bean ice cream.  no groupon needed, just delicious and cheap.  it's pretty amazing when you can eat that much 'expensive' food for that cheap.  but then we had to drive home.  as many of you probably know, indiana had to close the I-64 bridge over the ohio river because it is unsafe (i love our rotting infrastructure).  so all the traffic leaving louisville was forced into 2 lanes.  it took us an hour to get out of louiville.  then we drove in the dark and the misting-windshield-glaring rain with our poor dangling turn signal flapping along the side of the car the rest of the way back to west lafayette.  it was a long day, but the work looks good on the wall, and we made it back safely, even if we did have a couple of scars on our car.

special lobster roll of the day