Anne and I are living together for the first time in 7 years (the first 3 years were Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin, so we saw each other every weekend, but since then we have had Pittsburgh to Santa Cruz, CA, Santa Cruz to Portland, Oregon, and two years of Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine) so as far as we are concerned, living together with our elderly cat is a queer utopia.
One room of our apartment has shelves above each of the door ways, and the installations started with me putting a bright green feather boa (a Halloween acquisition) on one of the shelves so the cat wouldn't eat it. This turned into the frighteningly cheerful installation "Grimlyfiendish". Anne gave me the crowning touch, the bunny, for xmas.
Next came the Styrofoam head which I used to fit the fake teeth I wore glued around my eyesockets for Halloween this year and its fateful combination with the rubber vulture. We're still looking for fake rocks to increase the desolate feel of the 'Postapocalyptic' installation. (The head itself and its bloody state date from an impromptu Judith with the head of Holofernes costume for a friend.)
The 'Fireworks' installation is a combination of expended and unexpended 4th of July fireworks where the spent ones have been supplemented with tissue paper (it's above the bedroom door).
The 'Classical' installation is a combination of a phrenology head (from Anne's former student Adam Sargeant and his girlfriend Megan Lagess) with my favorite sculpture adage: if you don't know what to do with it, add grapes (often such grapes later get removed, but no matter what, it's an interesting change in direction). These particular grapes are the special 'little grapes' that I sometimes have to defend from little old ladies at church rummage sales
Lol: Are you buying those?
Me: Yes!
Lol (piteously): But they're the little grapes, which are so hard to find!
Me: I know!!
The crowns are 'gothic tiaras' that Anne and I bought at a Halloween store. Halloween is the absolute best time of year, as far as I'm concerned, because it's the time when the useless crap that's being imported from China isn't Pokeman figurines or Thomas the Tank Eengine crap but black rat shaped erasers or glow in the dark monster eyeballs or little skeletons on a string! Namely, the stuff of my utopia.
2 comments:
So good! The grapes -- brilliant. Other things too, but the grapes especially please me.
In college, I had a poster on my door that said "Juxtaposition is everything." Obvious, simplistic, but at least marginally true, and applicable to your installations (and delightful commentary) and, really, this site overall.
I'm so glad you and Anne are once again able to cohabitate. I think of you and Anne often and miss you both.
I love the "GrimlyFiendish" installation the most! Congratulations on being able to live together again, and shelves above doors is an AMAZING idea. Whoever thought of that is a genius. We think of Loch Ness as our mobile installation. Whether lounging on the cool hardwood floor in the middle of the hallway, or the one in the middle of the kitchen, we think of her as a living commentary on "Sloth."
We miss you guys!
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