Since this is the last day of the show, I thought it would be fitting to post a few picture of the first day. These pictures were sent to me by Esther Randall the gallery director of the Giles Gallery at EKU.
Hunter is on the ladder doing the heavy lifting while I, well direct. This doesn't fit my memory of installing the show but here it is, documented in real time, I am saying "a little lower on the right." "That's it."
I am not sure why, but this image has a sort of a desperate "Raft of the Medusa" quality to me. We seem to be clinging to the ladder for salvation, and I guess that's not completely inaccurate. There is certainly a lot of opportunity for things to go horribly wrong here but luckily they didn't. We will be repeating this drama for the de-install so....
Soon, I will be posting images of the show after it was all put together with proper lighting. It was a good a show, Hunter and I look forward to re-creating and adapting it for future spaces and scenarios. For now, this was a very good first collaboration.
I went to Eastern Kentucky University for my undergraduate degree and have spent a fair amount of time in the Giles Gallery looking at shows, being involved in shows and was honored once again, to have an opportunity to show my work in the place where my professional artistic journey began.
In some ways, the Giles Gallery is where I decided to pursue art. It is where I first experienced the kind of challenging art that makes you bite the heel of your hand in desperation. There was a very specific "happening" where one man rubbed mud all over another naked man and then scraped it off. I couldn't stand it. I was mad about it. I told all of my friends about the overwhelming ridiculous thing I had seen and we laughed and shook our heads but I couldn't stop asking myself "why" had he done this thing. What was he trying to communicate to me, a young person from eastern Kentucky, sitting on the floor of the gallery, bug eyed and unbelieving? So I changed my major to art. It was the right thing to do.