a work in progress

I'll keep this brief, but I wanted to share one of my projects here. Other projects from last semester can be viewed here on my website (the still-in-progress brick project, neighbor hood book, conversation collaboration, and koti pizza). Unfortunately, I haven't had time to provide contextual information for those yet.

This project is currently taking up most of the space in my studio. I realized yesterday that it needs more work, so it's officially a work-in-progress again. Yes, that is a giant air plant in it!

It's been a very busy semester. Open studio day feels like it was ages ago, and that was the last time I wrote a post here. So, there is approximately only one month left before summer break, which means I'm almost half way done...and I still have so much to do.

More to come in the future! Thanks for checking it out.

installation in progress: koti pizza

This blog took a back seat to my Finnish endeavors this summer. But now I'm back! It's nearly the end of September, and I've been in graduate school for a month now already.  It's been truly overwhelming. It was one thing to imagine what it would be like, and quite another thing to be living it.  {It's kinda my fault for auditing an extra class, but hey, when else will I get to learn Português Brasileiro with enthusiastic college freshmen and sophomores?}

Lyndon with my Koti Pizza installation somewhere around midnight yesterday.

I decided to sign up for one of the two installation spaces we have over at the grad studios for a little self-imposed deadline. They are available in one week slots, and I stayed up quite late last night to get it up (with Lyndon's help). I didn't want to fall into the trap of spending weeks hemming and hawing about ideas. I'd much rather see them physically manifested, reflect on what was successful or not, and move on.

This work is based on what I found when I went to the address where my great-grandmother used to live in Tampere, Finland. The building has been replaced by a strip of shops. On the corner is a Koti Pizza, which is a chain in Finland. Ironically, Koti means "home" in Finnish. So the house is now a Home Pizza, which is not at all a home pizza. The video on the right shows an actual home pizza being made in a home, while the video on the left shows Koti Pizza at closing time one night in August.

The pizza that is being made is an "Americana", which is topped with pineapple, ham, and blue cheese as well as mozzarella. It's close to what Americans would call a Hawaiian Pizza. The tape "drawing" on the wall is derived from architectural drawings from the early 20th century, when my ancestors lived there. The plans at that time were drawn up for a stove replacement. The videos are projected into the spaces where the two stoves were located in the drawing.

There are many layers that come to mind with this project:

• the replacement of a home with a commercial space that uses the word "home"
• the contrast between the cold commercial space and the warmth and sensuality of making something at home with your hands (and with someone else)
• the misinterpretation of cultural icons 
• the transformation of traditional worker's housing architecture in Tampereella to a more generic and bland type
• the disappointment of looking for "home" and never quite finding it, and the idea of making home wherever one is

I'll take better photos soon and probably put them on my website. The finished installation includes a recipe viewers can take away from the right side, as well as a stripped down "menu" page on the left showing Koti Pizza's "Americana" pizza.

*Update* This is a link to the video

mosquito test

The forests are so beautiful (and look so peaceful) here in Finland. However, every time I step inside one, I'm surrounded by flies, mosquitoes, spiders... How maddening that the time of year when it's warm and sunny, and one would want to have skin exposed, is also the time when you're most likely to be attacked by little, annoying creatures.

Yesterday, after such an adventure into the forest (to pick bilberries), I came back to my desk and made a big, ugly mosquito using newspaper and a torn up book, along with some black cord I found, feathers my friend Ais gave me, and a few BBQ skewers.

I'm trying to figure out how to move the mosquito in a way that mimics the creepy way that they buzz around with their nasty dangling legs. He's a little test I did today:

kickstarter launch!

Today I launched a KickStarter campaign for the artist residency I will be attending this summer in Haukijärvi, Finland at the Arteles Creative Center. After many weeks of work on the video, it's a relief to finally be able to share all the fun little animations I made with you.

The project is:  Ephemeral Past --> Material Present

Check out the Video

I will keep a Finland blog that will be open to the public until June 9, 2013. After that date,  the Ephemeral Past --> Material Present blog will be private and dedicated to all $25+ backers of my KickStarter campaign, who will be added to the "readers" access list.

I'm grateful to all backers and supporters of me and the project ... Backers below $25 will still receive official project updates via the KickStarter site, and will be able to view this blog as always, but those updates will not be as frequent or as detailed as the ones on the Finland blog and won't include extra insights and fun details about food and travel.


I have never kept a blog during my travels, so this is a very special case where I have decided to do so as an extra special part for most of the rewards. 

While the campaign is active, I still have the ability to add rewards. If you think of something I may have overlooked that would make a great reward, please feel free to leave a comment and I will consider it!

Thanks to all for your support! Remember, KickStarter is all-or-nothing, so please spread the word. :)

sneak peek: kickstarter video

I've been having a lot of fun making these little animations. So far, I have taken photos for probably 10 clips out of a possible 20+. Some are long and required hundreds of photos, and others are like this one above: quick and easy. I hope to finish the video and launch the KickStarter in the first week of May. I backed two projects that are currently going on at the Arteles Residency and received a postcard from one artist and a letter (and photo) from the other this week...fun! I don't know either of them, but have enjoyed hearing about the snow, the art making, and a trip on a ferry to Tallinn.

This afternoon, I spent a good amount of time cutting out little paper objects (tiny undies, a tube of toothpaste, and an umbrella among them) and will photograph them for a "vessel" clip that I'm really excited about tomorrow. I also cut out leaves for a plant and spelled out the word "project" using sticky letters. I stopped cutting when I realized the sun had set and it was too dark to see in the room. Most people would have just turned on a light, but I took it as a cue to make cinnamon popcorn and write this blog entry. 

Scary...the middle finger on my right hand has actually gone tingly from overuse of scissors...and it's been two days since then. So now I'm using an x-acto knife to cut. It's great to be semi-ambidextrous at times like these. Scissors go in the right hand and most other tools in the left.

More announcements coming soon!

winging it

Here's a peek at what I've been working on lately using those cardboard boxes. I managed to watch two films while making these parts: 1) The End of the Line (a documentary on over-fishing) and 2) The Flaw (a documentary on income inequality and the financial crash).

Now I'm off to get started on my KickStarter video! If you have any suggestions for great rewards for me to offer to backers for my project in Finland, feel free to leave a comment.

Until next time....

darn it! sock gallery

july 2012

july 2012

june 2012

june 2012

june 2012

june 2012

work in progress

june 2012

project: ice cream party

This project was a collaboration between addoley and lyndon in conjunction with graduate students from Washington University's Sam Fox School.

                       

We've noticed that ice cream seems to have a way of heightening emotion and bringing people together. Think to the familiar image of a woman who has just experienced painful rejection crying over a pint of ice cream, or to the other extreme, an image of children chasing an ice cream truck.

A cinnamon heath ice cream played a major role in getting addoley and lyndon together nearly eight years ago in Baltimore. So in this vein, an e-mail was sent requesting proposals for flavors. These flavors were curated down to six:

avocado lime

pink peppercorn honey

bourbon date

cucumber melon

lemongrass vanilla rum

chocolate irish car bomb

Flavors were chosen for their creativity and deliciousness potential - with practical concerns factoring in to weed out flavors involving expensive or meat-based ingredients. Over the course of a month, addoley and lyndon spent many days creating and tasting, inviting participants and other friends to an ice cream party in the afternoon on May 15, 2012. 

By creating homemade ice cream in flavors that were invented (and not commercially available), we sought to create a unique and enriching ice cream experience for our community of friends, which include lyndon's classmates and my coworkers.

side effects for some

you ate it, now rate it
participants rated each flavor on a scale of 1 to 5

my personal favorite

after everyone left, we made milkshakes.

darn it!

 a new project

my very first darn job - may 2012

I think a lot about waste. How I waste. What we waste. Wasted time and wasted money.

And then I had beautiful-but-holey socks that I didn't want to throw away...which led to this project.

Background:

For the past few years, I've primarily been wearing wool socks (specifically smartwool socks) because they are ridiculously comfortable, and when you walk a lot, you need comfortable socks. I like the idea of merino wool: its naturalness and renewability, its thermal and odor-resistant properties (I wear these socks many times before washing them!), its resistance to dirt, and the fact that it grows on sheep.

I first learned about the wonders of merino while living in New Zealand, where sheep are a pretty big deal. L worked in menswear in a department store, and Icebreaker (one of the NZ brands they sold) let each employee pick out any item from their catalog. He got an amazingly thin but warm hoodie that he still loves to wear five years later. It was an incredible to get that for free because, in case you didn't know, merino wool is pretty expensive - but definitely worth it.

It's interesting to think back to the (before mass production) past, when clothes were precious because there were laborious hand-processes required to make or have them made. To make wool socks, someone would have to shear a sheep, wash the wool, hand card it and spin it to make a yarn, dye it and then knit it. After all that, it would be insane to toss a pair of socks out because of a hole. 

So back to my socks. They were expensive (relatively) and treasured, and I didn't want to waste. During a visit to Portland back in January, my mentor Erica Edwards of Quotable Content showed me a wool pair she had darned that had felted together nicely. My mom had talked about darning her underwear during hard times in her twenties, and though, thankfully, times are not too hard for me at the moment, I decided to follow in the footsteps of a tradition of repair and give my socks a longer life. 

I happened to have an orange ball of wool yarn. So I darned them.* And then I darned another pair, and soon enough I could wear those socks again without my toe poking out. I liked the contrast of the new yarn to the old, that it added to the visibility of my work...knowing and seeing that I had done that.

Proposal:

This is where you come in. Send me a worn or holey pair of socks that you love and I will repair them (for free), photograph them, and send them back to you. 

Near the top right of this page is an "E-mail: Click Here" button. E-mail me to get the address to send them to. Tell your friends and co-workers. Send them to this page if they want to know the background story. My only requests are that you only send one pair, and that I can choose whatever color of yarn that I darn well please.

Thank you!

click here to see the darn it sock gallery




*Darning is the name for the method of repairing holes or worn areas in knitting or fabric using a needle and a thread (of a similar material to the original garment).