Friday, March 06, 2015

TSITCASAA (Plan B) - Opens Tonight!

The installation of To Stand in the Center and See All Around (TSITCASAA) has been going really well.  Head Installer at StudioLove aka Finnian has a genuine talent for seeing how things should be put together.  As we looked at the space and laid out the materials, he came up with an idea that saved hours and hours of work.  Yup, raised that boy right, I did!

But no installation goes smoothly the whole way through - I think it is some law of physics or something - and TSITCASAA is no exception.  Yesterday, as the Head Installer and I struggled to put up the lights and the bladders as the ceiling of the space that I have created, it became clear that it was not going to work.  It became clear when the whole thing fell to the ground just as we were about to congratulate ourselves on overcoming gravity through a combination of nails and packing tape.  The thing lay on the ground in a pile and I looked at Finn and said, "I think it is time for Plan B."  He said, "Do you have a Plan B?"

The answer was no but I quickly invented one.  To be honest, it is these moments where art happens for me.  The vision of What It Should Look Like has been shattered, or in this case, collapsed in a pile and I have minutes to come up with something else that will be as good or better than what I had planned.  It is a very alive moment.

As it turned out, Plan B is a good thing.  The lighting, which was not working for me as a ceiling piece is now a floor piece (see, physics again - don't fight gravity!) and it is doing exactly what I had hoped.  The bladders, which would have been a funky ceiling are also now on the floor and they make better sense there.  I am really liking it.

My handspun, hand knit piece that was the start of this whole thing is just one element of many.  It is doing what I want it to do but it isn't really the main focal point.  As I look back at what I had wished for when I looked at those Richard Serra drawings - that they weren't so reflective of the light from the oil stick - I see that my knit piece has succeeded.  It is like a black hole, absorbing all the light and creating an infinite space.  Does it matter that I spun the wool, or even if it is wool at all?  I honestly don't know.   If you only look at the end results, then I really don't know.  Maybe some other material would have the same effect.  But it does matter to me because it is what I needed to do in order to get from my starting place in the Metropolitan Museum in 2011 to bkbx gallery in 2015.  When looked at from that perspective, then I think you can safely say that the answer is yes.

(Pictures are coming!)

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