Almost-new website
Yesterday I took a leap forward towards refashioning my life as something other than a person who merely treads water all the time: I bought a new computer. As I explained to some of my freshmen, the last time I had a new computer, they were in middle school. And then today, I started out on Part Two – redesigning my website.
Good god it’s a huge job. For starters, not having a decent computer for so long means I haven’t documented a lot of my work; and then there’s also the fact that I seem to work 24/7, so there’s so much stuff to be caught up on – we are talking literally a couple of hundred images that need to be added. It’s pretty overwhelming. Then add stuff like press, student work, texts… and well, there’s a reason why I’ve put this job off for so long.
But I almost have a decent start ready to go and premier to the world. My hope is that I’ll be done by this weekend and able to launch it, and then slowly chip away at what’s missing. I’m cheered by the fact that I will have an actual live, human intern this summer (well, I’m convinced she’s going to be offered an amazing and well-paid full time job the second she gets her diploma, but in case that doesn’t happen immediately I have her for a little bit) who I can have help me with this task.
I tend to torture myself with these endless questions of What am I doing with myself, what do I spend all my time on, am I accomplishing anything, and so forth. After sitting down and digging through all these images I feel like wow, well… I guess what I’ve been doing with my time is working. A lot.
It’s up! West Thames Park!!!
My installation is finally up at West Thames Park!
Photos courtesy Katie Armstrong. More available here.
And more info on the project, including a copy of the text that will accompany it available free for download, here.
Downtown Alliance info
Here’s some more info on the organization that sponsored the public art project I just finished. They’re sponsoring a variety of different artists’ projects – going to see them could make for a nice walking tour through lower Manhattan when it gets a little warmer out!
My project goes up Tuesday, weather permitting.
What I did on my vacation.
To make a very long story really short…
The good news is that I got a really awesome gig to make a huge “mural” (basically, a digital printout of a drawing made for the site, which measures 5′ x 130′ and wraps around a scaffolding).
The bad news is that between the craft fair and school, I had about two weeks to come up with the image.
Yikes! That’s a lot of drawing for two weeks! I worked straight through the holidays and I’m still catching up on rest and my life and so forth. But I got it done. I did a scaled down model of the site (seven panels at 10″ x 40″) that has been scanned and will be printed on vinyl the final size.
The site is the perimeter of the construction of a children’s playground in lower Manhattan. It will start to be installed next week (hopefully – the weather has a lot to do with these things, I have learned) and I’ll post the location and pictures of it and such when I have them. The work is a little different for me because it doesn’t have text – it’s basically what my drawings look like before I’ve 100% finished them. I get to keep the final drawing and do whatever I want to with it, which in this case means to work on it further and add text, which I will be doing really soon. Also, I will be making the text that should accompany the piece available for download so that if anyone wants to print it out and bring it along with them when they go to look at it, that’s an option.
Making the work without text was a compromise, but I feel ok with it. I like that I can say whatever I want on the downloaded text rather than having to submit something to be reviewed by a committee. My writing isn’t ever really “controversial” but it is personal – having a group of people I don’t know go through it and say that some things can stay and some should go would be weird. And given that the piece is about fixing up a garden and the compromises you have to make back and forth when doing that, it seemed really fitting to compromise on this.
Anyway. Here’s a couple of the panels. More pics soon!
(I have no idea why, but when I post these pictures online the color gets all screwed up. Sorry about that – they’re your usual Amy colors. I have no idea why one of the hills looks magenta.)
working 