So I’ve been working on the inside of the yurt to turn it into a studio gallery. Got some lights up and got some semi-transparent panels (biodegradable corroplast) mounted to hang work on. In real life it isn’t quite as cool as the picture, but I’m so tired of being intimidated by all the impossibly clean, anally precise, geometrically elegant images I see coming from those damn Dutch designers that I’ll let it pass for what it looks like. You’ll have to come by and check it out yourself if you doubt it.
And then there’s the grounds outside the yurt…
This is a subset of our local flash crop mob: Linda, Lynn and Ann plus a whole flock of dogs (Maggie, Gerret and Girlfriend). They represent a local group of folks who have nothing better to do with their time then to help other folks with large tedious jobs like picking up huge quantities of sticks and downed limbs in our woods leading up to the yurt just so it looks a little bit better. This is how they spent their Labor Day weekend.
Are they a warm-hearted altruistic bunch? Do they represent a vanishing set of values in this crazy world? Are these the kinds of young folks you wish your sons and daughters would marry? (I mean assuming you’re now in your 80s and your kids are single and pushing 60.) Well so it would seem, unless you follow them after the sun goes down…
This is a yurt we have on our property. It’s in the woods maybe 400 feet uphill from our home. No water but it’s got electricity on a pole. Whatever brilliant reason we had for putting it up there 15 years ago has long escaped my memory. Over time it’s been occupied by a succession of young, brave, artistic types who’ve exchanged some manual labor and pet sitting for a free, if rustic, place to store their stuff. I’d say “place to live” except invariably as soon of they’d stored all their stuff and spent a few days there they find a boyfriend or girlfriend in town and spend most of their time there. So it’s been kind of a giant closet in the woods. I should clarify that there is a bath house down the hill, so they always had access to indoor plumbing and a hot shower, but by and large they all left me to wonder if it’s a rhetorical truism to ask, “Do tenants shit in the woods?”
Anyway, it went empty again this summer and I finally decided that it would be better to use it myself than look for another person who would want to trade free storage for never being around. So I’m in the process of converting it into a gallery space to display some of my art and to serve as the founding headquarters of Bourbon, Dogs and Art.
These days I’m cleaning on the outside and cleaning on the inside and trying to get it ready for the Alamance County artist studio tour. Yurts can get a bit grungy on the outside over time, especially deep in the woods, but yurt interiors are always cool.
I’m adding some lights and putting up some panels to hang art on. Think I’m going to hang some art on the inside and some on the outside and line the walk up the hill with banners in the woods. Should be fun. Have to figure out how to parley it into a venue for some Bourbon, Dogs and Art events.
Red Mushroom, digital image on canvas, 32x16, 48x24
Here’s a new artwork just completed. It’s yet another red mushroom. (A coincidence given my last art post. I’ve only done two. But it is the season.) I’ve decided to refer to this recent series as “animist portraits” since they have a certain portrait quality to them. I don’t want them confused with work done by botanical illustrators or macro-photographers. I just find things around our place and make them look good. I manipulate these images just like a Playboy photographer to create something that looks real but is maybe just a hairs-breath too-good-to-be-true. I’m not heading down that road where I’m going to look up scientific names, genus and species of the little bits of flora and fauna I start with to create these images. Biggest problem I have is naming these portraits. Relatively generic words like “leaf,” “seed,” “weed,” “grass,” etc. dominate my titles and as the series grows they fail as a useful reference. I’m going to keep thinking about it. Any suggestions?*
*Note that at least for the time being I’ve forsaken irony, which may come as a shock to folks who’ve known me well (and would thus think this is ironic). I just feel I’ve lost the desire and commitment necessary to be a respectable player in an Internet-assisted universe dominated by competitive irony. Somebody’s gotta just say normal stuff.
If the Ross Sisters would have performed at PS122 circa 1987 they’d probably be regulars in Vegas a la Blue Man Group today. Certainly someone would have called me at High Performance magazine and said, “you really really really need to write about this group.” If they were performing today it would probably have a seriously negative impact on Lady Gaga’s career (assuming a contemporary audience would believe there was no computer manipulation involved). Anyway, I guess this is what sisters did before cell phones and texting. (Courtesy kottke.org)
Bourbon, Dogs and Art is a blog by Steven Durland. It is mainly about bourbon, dogs and art (and chickens). BDA is also the name of his art studio. More about that and other bits of practical information available at durland dot com.
I’m adding some lights and putting up some panels to hang art on. Think I’m going to hang some art on the inside and some on the outside and line the walk up the hill with banners in the woods. Should be fun. Have to figure out how to parley it into a venue for some Bourbon, Dogs and Art events.
