Yesterday was nonstop until about 9pm. Adam5100 stopped by on his fixie and dropped off his CDs of images (the original got lost in the mail). I jokingly blamed him on the throw up across the street from my place, and then we discussed how to create a 14 layer stencil without bridges (I have no idea, but he’s figuring it out). Josh emailed some chronology updates and clarifications. I went to storage and got things ready for Burningman, and also went through my stencils, picking some out to take to BRC. See that Logan sent his photos, and Peat gave me some great shots to add to the ones I have for his section. Maya helped me sort out her difusor photos, and MayU in Taiwan resent some of his submissions. Got a few more cold submissions and really hope that it’ll all fit in. Burningman is eclipsing the book at this point, as is contact with loved ones (I haven’t been in touch; too busy). Adam gave another designer lead, but it might be too much for too little. Still won’t hurt to meet and ask.
Off to storage to pick up my 45s and costumes! And then do 100 other things before Friday morning……….
Ah, another packed day of Stencil Nation work. The deadline for submissions passed today and I think I have too much to cram into the book. Only about six artists and documentarians still need to get their works to me, so that percentage isn’t too bad. Of the six, I’ve spoken with D.S. Black, Peat, Logan, and Adam5100. Jef Aersol will hopefully get some 1980s images to me later in the week. Hoping to meet up with Adam tomorrow to get his disc o’ stencils. D.S. is scanning negatives of SF stencils from the 1980s. Peat seems slammed with work, which is a good thing.
Of the submissions that came through today, Pixnit only had a few since her hard drive recently failed and ate her high res files. Got some amazing images of stencils in Oaxaca, Mexico. One says “Resistance Art” and defines the whole batch I got from Ita. Just downloaded some stencils from LBS in Taipei, Taiwan that’ll hopefully go in. And Stencil Revolution came through and about 3 artists gave me their top 5 tips on a thread I had there. I think I have a good batch of how to’s to begin to edit. Oh, and Chris said that it was OK to use the photos I took of his stencil booth at Burningman last year. Still need to ask the BMorg if I can use the other ones, most of which are from the DPW crew and straight up graffiti “street” stencils (graffiti at Burningman? This year, I’m on it!)
I’m actually caught up on checking the feeds and downloading all the images. Someone dropped me brand new Banksy photos from the UK and didn’t take any photo credit. Hmm, wonder if it was the man himself? That’s all I have for now to take off of my online file storage site. That didn’t exist a few years ago, so it has become a blessing due to email crashes. Guess Google mail would’ve worked too, but I prefer MediaFire.
So busy today. I managed to take a few breaks to eat. Had dinner with Laura and went for a walk to get away from the computer. Here I am 6 hours later working away. Took some time out to begin packing for Burningman. It has approached furiously, and so I must go to help the Sustainable Living Roadshow get its carny on under the Man. This’ll be my last big departure from the book project. September and October will be all about the book.
Onward now to begin to cull photos, write, and fret about who the graphic designer will be.
Last night, at 2am, I went to bed with my mind still wandering. I spent most of the day going through my archive photos and pulling out some of the best shots for the Stencil Nation book. I’d e-mailed people from around the world about stencils and art, hopped over to Flickr to look at other photos, and checked and rechecked my working sections to see how well the photos look together. But as I tried to go to sleep, I thought that instead of not blogging about my sitting-in-front-of-a-computer life, I should blog about what I’m doing for the book. Like a diary, with short descriptions or run-on sentences, I felt I could share with everybody what I’m doing in front of my computer all day as well as hype the book. I could even let all of you in on how a book like this comes together (don’t think it has been done for a stencil book).
So I’m introducing a Stencil Nation category today for HappyFeetTravels.org and will hop on here as often as I can to let you all know what I’m working on, who I’m talking to, etc. So, on to what’s going on with the book project:
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For my articles about last year’s Bread & Puppet Vermont experience, go here and here and here.
August 5, 2007
Spectacle for the Heart and Soul
By HOLLAND COTTER
GLOVER, Vt.
FOR the first time in many summers the Bread and Puppet Theater will travel nine hours from northern Vermont for a New York City gig, at Lincoln Center on Wednesday evening. Then the troupe will turn around and ride back to its farm just below the Canadian border, where it will put on the same show. You can easily spot the group en route: 1963 school bus, painted sky blue, with a mountain landscape, an angel and a beaming sun on the side.
People who know of the troupe without really knowing its work tend to link it to political street theater of the 1960s, an accurate but incomplete association. Recently I’ve been thinking of the theater in a contemporary context. At a time when the art industry is awash in cash and privilege, and theater tickets routinely go for $100 or more, Bread and Puppet continues, more than 40 years on, to live an ideal of art as collective enterprise, a free or low-cost alternative voice outside the profit system.
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So my birthday party rocked yesterday. Good to have Laura’s friends meet mine and good to see some of my friends who don’t visit much. David Morley arrived promptly at 2pm and got to enjoy the Middle Eastern food I made: yogurt salad, tomato and cucumber salad, and fried falafal. While the pitas got packed, he dropped a bomb to me and Pod; the 1999 Seattle WTO protest was being filmed as a Hollywood indie movie.
What? WTF?!
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Wondering where I’ve been? Have you given up on checking my RSS feed? Has this blog fallen off the face of the earth? What the hell happened to Russell in July?
Not much. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been writing. Well, not exactly “not much,” but mostly things I didn’t want to write about. I’ve backed off of reading the news, reading books (though Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” rocks!), going out, consuming anything beyond a movie here or there. So I haven’t been thinking about politics, taking many photographs, doing any carny or puppet gigs, or thinking in audial mode. I haven’t really left the house that much.
Why? Well, I spent half of July at a vipassana retreat in North Fork, CA (near Yosemite NP). The course lasted 10 days, Goenka the teacher called it “prison,” “deep surgery,” “a monastery,” and I had an intense time. I couldn’t talk, write, gesture, interact with anyone else beyond the assistant teachers and the manager. The less distractions the better. My brain more than made up for the lack of technology, consumptive items, and interaction with others. I wrote amazing blog entries about the course, made many revisions, and then realized that I shouldn’t say much about the workshop. Once we all broke Noble Silence, we all realized that we had different experiences.
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