REBOOT_ East Wall

Originally uploaded by love not fear

When I arrived in their little office in downtown Missoula, I was greeted with warm smiles. S. was pretty excited to have me deliver the piece, and I was pretty excited to be able to sign it in her presence, help her decide where it should hang, and finally, hang it on her office wall. The women there provided me with a small metal hammer which was painted in “feminine” colors and had flowers on it. They got a kick out of it when I drove the nail using the provided hammer.

The piece looks great in her office, and I meant to photograph it, but was caught up in the contagious excitement of the women as they admired the piece. We talked about it for a while, before easing into friendly talk comparing office humor and other daily life conversations.

After it had been hung, E. commented that the wall looked a little lonely, that maybe S. needs more of my pieces to compliment the existing one. S. had already mentioned the possibility of wanting another piece, and I was glad to encourage her, picking up a dry erase marker and drawing on the whiteboard how the wall might look with the addition of two complimentary pieces.

As I left the office, I was remembering the first time I had completed a similar project. I remember how personally involved in it I was. This time was different. It was less about the emotion, and more about presenting the work in such a way that the emotion came through in a humorous way. I re-learned some of the things I learned the first time around, namely that vellum applied with spray adhesive is much better than self-adhering vellum.

This version of the project was much more coherent, all of the pieces being almost of uniform size, all being a uniform shape. I enjoyed using two different models for the photographs as well. And the distance and time between me and the models involved made creating the project more enjoyable. Yeah, I was stressed about finishing it on time, but I enjoyed the entire process more and was more deliberate in the way that I went about it.

Finishing the show felt good, and it generated a lot of brainstorming on my part for subsequent shows I’ll be doing. Brainstorming around concepts of content, but also around concepts of logistics about how I want to pull off the ideas themselves.

Right now work has got me pretty busy. Working three jobs currently. I’m tying to do something creative every day, and am constantly thinking about the next project, when i can start it. In the meantime, I’m learning how to use a new camera. I’ll be posting some of those photographs here as time allows.