PNCA Sculpture Chair David Eckard has been consumed all summer long with “Float,” an incredible river-floating installation that’s part of the upcoming TBA:06 festival. For the next two weeks, David will share his insight and images while crafting this unforgettable multimedia experience. Email David your thoughts at .

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Sep 11, 2006

It is about bridges

I want to finish up my blog with a response, reaction and acknowledgement and join the discussion because in addition to doing the Float project, I too experienced it.

The immediate and reactive quality of blog culture is an amazing, vibrant tool for criticism, praise, personal reaction, professional posturing and offers a multiplicity of vantage points that can define our shared experiences with an unimagined complexity. This past weekend has been filled with on-line, email and live varieties of “You made me cry, it was so beautiful” and “You made me cry, it was so disappointing” and I’ve been emotionally rollercoaster-ing the complexity of these Float responses.

I’ve discovered that there is a large, slippery void between the personal, private satisfaction arrived at in my studio and the expectations of and accountability to a larger audience’s needs. This void is filled with hidden details, ecstatic serendipity, unanticipated changes and an unpredictability that is both exhilarating and devastating. Thank you all for being engaged, frustrated, excited and supportive enough to have the discussions. I can only grow from the discourse and will continue to discover and define the responsibilities and challenges of a practice that is attempting to bridge that void.

But first let me answer the big three:

1. I lit the fire way to early and it burned like a kiln in my perforated “lanterns”. It burned unbelievably fast with the wind being drawn across the barrels. I should have lit the barrels at the bridge. It would have been nothing to make an 8’ match or torch compared to the other fabrication insanities I put myself through and it would have given everyone the firework moment that was expected.

2.We set the sound on shore at levels we thought would not only boom (beyond our legal limits) through the city but would carry even cleaner across the water. Some people heard it crystal clear and others heard either ambiguous mumbles/notes or nothing at all. Disappointing to myself and I know to Bobby who worked like a madman on this component.

3. I believed I was going to be on the Westside right up until I saw my tow-craft heading east. There was a last minute change in where I was allowed to present and I’m sorry to everyone that was invited to the Westside.

Those are some of the physical/technical tangibles I can most easily address. I’m not presenting them as excuses because they won’t excuse what you expected as the audience, collaborators and fellow participants. I honestly don’t know what could have matched the pure joy, wild energy and unified creative vitality I could see en masse swarming over, and under the bridge and in the smiling eyes of the beautiful kayakers and canoers slipping around and under the structure: What visual moment could top that? Alien invasion? An implosion of that beautiful full moon?

I took a very big step in my practice and took it on a very public path. It was optimistically encouraged, generously supported and passionately discussed.
That is the beauty of both PICA and Portland and I thank you both.

“Now my lungs split wide with trickster air.
Didn’t I see the cool, silver blue and white trace of day on your deceptive skin?
My beautiful city turning mirror soft with the sweep of wind.

How far do I have to go before I am truly on my way back home?”

PNCA community can comment in Homeroom

Sep 05, 2006

Bobby's Work

Fast forward to right NOW!

August abbreviated: bend, weld, prime and paint. Fuss over details, spend more money, sleep. Repeat for thirty one days.

I’m picking up the truck tomorrow and I get into the river Thursday.
Labor Day weekend was indeed spent laboring over the multitude of last minute (minutes that turned to hours) details.

I think I’m there.

This morning at Fred Meyer I had lighter fluid, firewood, batteries, four clip on book lights and a life jacket in my cart.
This selection of goods coupled with the apocalyptic priest/Christopher Walken thing I’ve got going on with my hair I’m sure convinced the clerk I was some deep-woods survivalist in the big city for my supplies and fixin’s.
I resisted the temptation to ask if they had manual typewriter ribbon…..”There are manifestos to be written….”

I wanted to share a portion of the soundscape Bobby Jones has developed for me. He came over Saturday and we piped it through the golden horns.

Fantastic! I can’t wait to hear it rippling over the river.
It really makes the piece and I can’t thank him enough.

I may or may not have an entry tomorrow (Wednesday) but will certainly follow up “post float” (maybe from Astoria?)

Please join me on the 7th at the Hawthorne Bridge around 7:30 PM on the west side. I’m pretty sure you’ll see me coming.

Thanks for following along.
Now let’s see how this turns out!

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Sep 01, 2006

Back off Davey Jones....

It slipped beautifully into the water and gracefully stopped, the barrels barely a third of the way in the water.

Damn, it floats!
It floats really well!

As I watched it gently bobbing in the water, the fist sized knot of tension I had been carrying in my neck all summer long untied and slipped away. As soon as this very adult tension exited, a squealing, adolescent, monkey boy joy entered my body.

Let me on that thing!!

We pulled it out into the river and I squirreled up one leg and crawled into my platform/treehouse/fort. I was eight years old, new bike, Christmas morning ridiculous.

Hell yeah it floats!

It felt amazing.
Here I was standing in an object I had created and it was floating on the river. Theory had met practice and did not hand it its ass on a platter. I jumped around, pulled from side to side and tried all sorts of disruptive moves to test the stability of the craft (It had now earned the title of “craft”). Ryan crawled up another leg to see if that would make a difference and we yanked and pulled and rocked and it laughed at our insolence. A jet boat zipped by and kicked up a fairly substantial wake but I gently rolled with the flow.

Call me Ishmael!

I could have stood there at my mild steel helm all day but realized my very generous and patient crew was thinking about the margaritas and Mexican food promised at the beginning of the day.

So was I.

We pulled it ashore, reversed our process and had it back in the truck in no time. We headed back to the studio, unloaded the parts and met at Acapulco’s Gold. After too much tequila and excessive amounts of food, I thanked my crew for their help, good humor and support and called it a day.

A very successful, rewarding day.

Hmmm, now that I know it works, it’s time to dress this beauty up….

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Aug 31, 2006

Anchors away...

Bobby, Ryan, Nick and I all grabbed a leg and starting inching it down the boat ramp. TJ was snapping shots and the other Willamette Park revelers were quite intrigued.

This was it.

In about twenty yards I would know if I had indeed figured it out or if I should have spent the summer painting show cat portraits and carving local driftwood into whimsical birds.

We bumped it down the incline and my ears were hyper-alert, waiting to hear the pings of failed welds and the creak of a potential collapsing structure.

The first barrel touched the water……..

Dramatic pause…..

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Aug 31, 2006

Tab A into slot B...

As you look at this photo (thank you TJ Norris) realize that this is the very base structure and it is in no way indicative of how festive, excessive, flamboyant and over the top the final piece actually is.

Trust me, I’m sitting under it right now in my kimono and fez writing this.

So the parts were scattered around the rental truck, the nuts and bolts had been shaken out of the can and the fittin’ grease was open and at the ready. What a luxury to have this much lifting, hoisting and swinging room. The piece in my studio was literally to the walls and was a constant head-cracking obstacle as I scooted about grabbing tools, drilling holes and rolling paint.

My diligent assistants were at the ready and the camera was rolling as we started to assemble the piece. First step was to slip the barrel mounts into two of the legs and attach these to the crow’s nest.

So far so good. A little grunting and persuading and we had half of the structure together in about an hour.

The third leg was lifted into place and bolted down. This was a touch more precarious because of the height, weight and general awkwardness of the position. Cross braces were slipped in and we tipped it up on to three of its eventual four legs. I felt a touch negligent with my crew by not being at the ready with a grand ole hoisting shanty but we somehow managed.

The fourth leg received its barrel mount and was lifted up to meet the other legs circling my potential micro, mariner stage. It was looking good. I was feeling confident and so far all of the holes lined up with all of the bolts. We rolled the empty 55 gallon Tamari barrels into place and strapped them into their holsters. It was a significantly tighter fit then in the studio because the barrels had heated up and were bloating out from the sun.

No extra parts by the truck, the nuts were tightened and there sat the Willamette, beckoning…………….

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Aug 27, 2006

chocked full of Float goodness....

I had a truck reserved and had rounded up a group of folks to help me with the test float. Thank you Bobby Jones (again!), Ryan Alexander-Tanner, Nick Grainger and TJ Norris (for the photos and more).

I’ve forgotten to mention that OPB is going to be doing an Art Beat episode on this project. Bruce Barrow is the producer of this segment and was very excited about tracking the progress. We joked that it would either be a great, concise record of my project or he’d have the local equivalent of the “Oh the humanity..” Hindenburg footage.

Funny? Joke?
What were the whispered wagers going back and forth between the camera and sound guys?
“At the bottom in ten minutes?”
“Never pass the end of the dock..”
“Wonder what his studio will go for….?”

The OPB crew had come over to shoot some fabrication footage in June and they were great. They got some good welding sparks, flashes and all of those juicy visual pyrotechnics and Bruce asked some great questions about the piece. They were at the test voyage and will be at the performance September 7th.

So, we got permission from the harbor master (thanks Jean Margaret), packed the truck with the necessary parts and headed to Willamette Park. I was very excited, scattered and giddy and realized halfway there that we had forgotten the all important “fittin’ grease” and spun back around to the studio. The grease provided us with a series of running gags and inappropriate humor during the assembly that hopefully will be edited out for decorum’s sake.

Blooper reel, definitely.

So we got to the park and started unloading all of the parts. It was incredibly hot and we were assembling the beast on a shade-free parking lot.

Again, I thank my assembly crew.

I was surprised how small everything looked laid out in piles and had a little stomach jump of “What if I completely disappear on the big, mighty Willamette…..?

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Aug 27, 2006

rubber to the road...walk the talk...sink or swim

So I’d been wrestling steel into shape and was looking at the end of July for the “test float”. All of the base components had been fabricated and it was crucial that I make sure my aesthetic engineering choices had a foot in reality before I spent any more time money or energy “accessorizing” or rococoing (it had become a verb over the summer for me) it.

Bobby was busying adding more texture and complexity to the sound component and I was ending my fabrication days with the computer on my lap (or on a patio table at the White Eagle) tweaking the monolog and watching Sept 7th rushing at me from over the horizon.

During this time I also wrote a new Podium monolog for the Oregon Biennial opening and was looking forward to that event. It was both a little strange and very exciting to see the pieces archived in the museum and I was very grateful that Jennifer Gately was excited about actually having me perform at the museum. I didn’t want to see the piece retired or worse, (museum does have it’s roots in mausoleum) and it reminded me how much I enjoy the excitement and immediacy of performing. It seemed so simple at the museum compared to what was in store: dry land, wheels, mercury free.

At this point Float was basically a very large table with splayed legs. There were no swags, bunting, horn mounts or horns. The waterspout was still a concept and my crow’s nest was floorless. I had coded all of the parts (A to A, B to B) and in my most Pollyannaesque optimism, I believed it would just pop together like one big toy. It is too large to be assembled completely in my studio and I had never seen the whole creature up with all of the barrels strapped in.

Better reserve that rental truck…15’, 20’?

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Aug 25, 2006

could have made a hat rack...a lot of hat racks.

1. When I lived in Chicago in the late 80’s, I had an experience that even after twenty plus years has remained lodged in my head and heart.

It was an incredibly hot August afternoon and I was walking to the Wilson El stop to head downtown. I had my freshly tailored urban survival face on and was looking straight ahead, ignoring the people asking for change and stepping over the ones whose change had been swapped for wine. Rounding the corner, I felt something snag up against my leg.

Rat? Demented pigeon?

I looked down to see a ratty piece of Christmas paper. It had blown up on my shoe and wrapped around my ankle.

Green with holly berries and elongated stars.

That instant dislocation in time, place, memory and association cracked me wide open. Early morning memories of gifts, family and secure beliefs slammed up against a then younger me anxiously redefining myself in direct contrast to that remembered flash. Instantly, every nuance of that city block demanded my full attention. The smells, the colors, the thickness of the air all crushed in on me shouting “Right now!”

A simple scrap of cheap printed paper that had missed its appropriate cue had brought me to my knees, weeping among the less potent trash on Malden Avenue.

2. In my studio I have an article from the newspaper tacked to my wall. It’s about a funeral parlor that uses the lint from a neighboring diaper cleaning service to stuff the satin upholstery in their caskets.

How can I possibly compete with this type of exquisite, accidental theatre?
How could I ever match the poetic clarity of this unintended metaphor?

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Aug 23, 2006

Roll out the barrels...

I had another exciting material acquisition adventure when I was ready to pick up the plastic barrels I needed for the flotation devices in my structure. I had always seen a city block sized lot of white, industrial barrels down in the southeast industrial side of town and thought it would just be a matter of pulling up and “ I’ll take eight of those off your hands, sir”.

They were stylish, lightweight and because of my buoyancy research I knew each one would displace 458.98952 pounds times eight for a grand total of 3671.912 pounds of buoyant displacement …..love the Google.

I tapped on the sliding glass window and the gentleman informed me that they had, “an iron clad contract with Coca-Cola and every single one had to be accounted for” Was it my imagination or was he blinking out some sort of “help me!” code with his eyes? I asked if I could at least lift one and see how thick the walls were thinking I could find a similar barrel elsewhere and he replied “no, no, no, absolutely no” and slid the window shut.

Could I slip into the yard, pick up a smear of their concentrated elixir, identify it back in my lair (studio) and effectively bring Coca-Cola to its knees with my corporate piracy? Obviously that’s what the guardian of the barrels was thinking.

Damn, those barrels were crucial. I had originally thought of using huge log chunks for floats (historical, critical, ironic, etc.) until I realized huge log chunks aren’t really available anymore and I don’t think I could process the guilt of my grand “old growth floats”

Damn.
But, on yet another trip to purchase more steel from my reluctant patron, I spied a beckoning pile of “food grade barrels for sale”. Gold.

I threw the first three of what I thought was going to be twelve (hadn’t done the Archimedes search yet) in the back of my truck and gleefully rushed back to the studio. Unloading them, I realized that the lids weren’t re-screwed on and I am still living with the record breaking heat baked stench of the residual Tamari sauce that glazed the back of my Toyota…

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Aug 23, 2006

Steely vision(s)

I want to first thank a few people whose donations and support have made the difference in whether this was going to happen or not.

Thank you PICA for believing in this extravaganza and for providing funds to let me bend, weld and rant.

Thank you John and Joan Shipley for being two of the bravest and most adventurous art supporters in the city.

Thank you Jane Beebe for your gift and encouragement. It means a great deal to me that you would so generously support an artist you don’t even represent. That’s big.

There are many more fellow conspirators but before this turns into a weepy, Emmy acceptance speech, I’ll get to the “beast”. I’ll certainly continue the acknowledgments during the run of the blog.

So with the above mentioned support, I was able to start thinking about materials. I first approached a steel distributor in the city about donating materials.
Why not?
I need to get more clever and confident in making these projects happen. I pulled together a lovely packet with images of past work, a glowing review of their past service and product (“Mmm…..that’s some fine steel (?)”) and a confident pitch about the “operatic, riverside moment of civic yadda, yadda, yadda…..” and dropped it in the mail. Before it even hit the bottom of the mailbox I flashed on the “gallery of art” they have under the counter glass…

What was I thinking?

I had sent them images of me daintily perched in my flower/throne from my Art Gym show, a shot of me in my Centaur appliance and images from both Scribe and Podium. I could see it so clearly, my photos up on the glass next to the proud steel eagles, whimsical whirligigs, iron Kodiak bears (standing), fish gates, kick-ass truck racks and really butch woodstoves…….

After not hearing from the president of the company, I thought I’d best check in. Maybe he was having trouble figuring out at what level he could best support me: sponsor, mega sponsor, patron, mondo sugar daddy, steel king, personal god, etc.

“Yes, I got your packet…………(really long pause)……….I have absolutely no (said slightly louder) desire to support you.”

Ouch.

The bigger ouch is that I still went there to get my steel! It is “some fine steel” and I knew they would always have the stock I needed and the guys that work there are incredibly patient with my picking through the racks.

I did, though, get to enjoy a strange bit of fiscal passive/aggressive behavior every time I paid. I would raise my voice a touch hoping it would slip under the president’s door:

“YES, please make YET ANOTHER BILL for HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS out to DAVID ECKARD, oh it’s for this OPERATIC, RIVERSIDE MOMENT OF CIVIC…”

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Aug 21, 2006

So what's that dangling bit........?

As soon as I started showing my little digital/maquette mock up around, the question always came up as to what that thing was hanging under me.

Larva, tail, tube, top?

Before “Float”, I have never made a scale maquette of a piece before I began fabrication. I have a few minimal sketches defining the parameters and detail/mechanical intersections of a piece and a general idea of the scale and relationship to my body. That’s about it. This allows the piece to change and shift in relationship to the material’s attributes and I can be more reactive to compositional and formal choices.

For “Float”, I knew I would need to have an image that would clearly define what it was I was going after and be able to use this for press, web images and fundraising strategies.
I chopped up some welding rod, sliced up some cardboard tubes, created a mini-me and tacked the whole thing together. I grabbed some lace I had sitting around (doesn’t everybody have lace… just sitting… around?) and used that to represent what I thought would eventually be steel mesh or expanded metal. A little spray paint, googled images of “river” and “bonfire” and the stunt double digitally came together.

So, what is the dangling bit?

For “Float”, I wanted to incorporate the idea of a stylized waterspout drawing up the history, memory and power of the river into a “channeled” monolog.

I grew up in the Midwest and always wished I could have experienced a tornado. Only once we went to the basement to nervously wait out a very severe storm. The strong winds and emerald green sky only carried the threat of a “twister”.

I’m not making light of their destructive nature or being insensitive to the damage and loss they create but there is something so intense and strangely beautiful about the appearance of a tornado.

Here are some amazing images I found on the web:

  
  

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Aug 20, 2006

A sailor walks into a bar...

What could I say in my monolog that would hold its own against the spectacle of the object, the draw of the fire and the depth of Bobby’s sound composition?

I have used spoken text in my work for only a couple of years and still feel I have a long way to go before I can incorporate it as comfortably as I can unify lace and steel. The specificity of language makes it potent, illuminating “material” or can define and limit the engagement I want from the participants.

Too poetic and it becomes esoteric quicksilver difficult and frustrating to grasp.
Too didactic and it repels like a dry, strident lecture.

I re-read my brief TBA description-

The Willamette River snakes through Portland and creates movement, boundaries and divisions. This natural, slow flowing artery is an arena for commerce, sport and spectacle. The water that is displaced by military ships can also maneuver private boats festive with holiday lights and transport barges heavy with grain. Its continual flow slowly marks the passing time and rinses clean a previous moment.

-and started scribbling down ideas and generating little chunks of text that started to define what the river might mean to me. It quickly went beyond sailors, sewage and skiffs to ideas of travel, freedom, imagined destinations, implicit danger and history.

I had a few pages of initial idea, poetic bits and descriptions but felt it was missing a depth and sense of scale that would give it the necessary gravity and romance. What could fatten up this rant? I have no nautical history, no longing for the sea and I’ve never asked you to “call me Ishmael”.

I needed to find a true source.

After a quick Google search, I found a book that could hopefully help me out: “Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman” by William Main Doerflinger. It’s an exhaustive collection of sea chanties and ballads and puts the songs into their proper cultural context. It’s also a book I never imagined would be on my shelf!

I now had additional text to react to and incorporate into the monolog. The actual stanzas would be incorporated into the recording and my spoken parts would be a call and response to that history.

After multiple attempts at recording, I finally got some versions where I didn’t sound like William Shatner doing a really bad Tom Waits and could relax a bit about the monolog’s potential impact.

Back to welding…….

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Aug 18, 2006

water on the brain

So, PICA agreed to include Float in the TBA festival, an imagined image was out there in the world and I had the summer ahead of me to make it happen.

In my studio I have a very tattered clipboard (very old school analog) that I make my lists on: projects, materials, plans, contacts, summer goals, etc. I started writing out what I thought it would take to make this happen and as one page turned to two and then turned to three, four, five… I had a sweaty flash of anxiety. I was going to be dealing with physics, buoyancy, structural integrity, and other natural laws that could care less about the aesthetics and esoteric concepts attached to my “art”.

Gravity and volume displacement could hand me the ultimate critique.

I’m not an engineer and I’ve always made the joke that I would never drive over a bridge I had welded but here I was attempting to build a craft to be very, very visibly navigated down Portland’s main waterway. I wouldn’t be “appearing before an incidental audience” or be “decoyed as worker” as in past projects. I was going to be a loud, flamboyant spectacle demanding attention. That would mean approaching the city (page six… anxious), the coast guard, the harbor master (page seven,...fussy) to make sure this project had a legal legitimacy. Luckily PICA provided someone to do the research for me concerning all of the crossed Ts and dotted Is. Thank you Jean Margaret!

I also knew I wanted to incorporate a haunting, beautiful sound composition to support the operatic intent of the piece. Bobby Jones has been doing some amazing audio/installation projects at PNCA and I approached him about working together on this project. He very, very generously agreed to compose a sound piece for me and also secured the use of four six foot long tapering circus horns for the amplification. They are sculpturally perfect and were four fabrication items I could cross of the list! Thank you Rose City Sound for being so generous and enthusiastic about this project.

Bobby has been a saint and has made a silk purse out of the vague sow’s ear I handed him. “I want a oooh, waaah sound that’s kinda rolling but not too melodic but evocative of sea chanties but not piratey..or too new agey…saucey but not clubby…” and on and on. Somehow, he is making sense of my incoherency and is producing a breathtaking composition. It will really enrich the monolog…oh yeah…the monolog….

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Aug 17, 2006

A River Runs Through Me?

It’s odd that in the last year, three distinct river projects have been in my creative outbox. I’m not really a water guy.
Hot tubs freak me out and don’t get me started on my “oh so Freudian” drain thing… But here sits the river(s).

I spent four months in Pont Aven, France last fall teaching a post-bac program and the biggest project I undertook had a direct link to the river that cut through the town. I fabricated a legend (complete with murdering villagers, a drowned villain, a burned orphanage and a spectral haunting) as a way to deal with my sense of cultural illiteracy and displacement.

It ended up as a “Ken Burnsesque” documentary riff with varying levels of success.

The concept research, the documentation fabrication, interviews and performance of my Jean Lapine character (photo) were actually more rewarding than the final product because of the collaborate orchestration necessary to make it happen.
Maybe I’m slowly learning that “plays well with others” is a good thing.

I just recently completed Widow’s Walk for Gallery Homeland?s Scratching the Surface project.

It was (if I may quote myself) “a riverside apparition of loss and yearning. I have constructed an elaborate lattice-like steel gown and veil adorned with 60+ votive candles. This baroque cage will be supported around my costumed body as I slowly walk the Esplanade at dusk. Operatic, beautiful and excessive, this slow, mournful promenade will honor the histories, power and inherent danger held in the flowing waters of the Willamette.” It was very slow, very hot and more solemn than I had anticipated. While doing the “mournful promenade” I emotionally went to a very complex, fragile state and was surprised at how such a simple, adorned, intentional walk could trigger a powerful, cathartic snap.

Is it the river?

So, I’m approaching the river again wanting excessive, operatic and grand. I never really noticed the beauty and tranquility of the Willamette until I experienced the raucous, loud, ever present Aven River in France. It truly seemed a reactive, living artery responding to both grand, natural cycles and minute, temporal changes. It also had the advantage of being exotic and romantic for me as I played artist/ex-pat sketching on the banks.

Could I invest that much romance into a river that’s best known for its raw sewage overflow and high mercury levels… What do I want?

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Aug 15, 2006

note to self-get white linen suit

Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo”

As I started to dip into the “Float” project I remembered how intense, poetic, beautiful and utterly ridiculous (in the most necessary way) this movie is. I last saw it years ago but the glacial pace and discordant imagery still resonated with me.

It was “homework” time.

I rented it and immersed myself into multiple, late night viewings of this epic. It again stunned me and I felt it was the perfect “essence” to hold in my head and heart as I began to develop and actualize my TBA project.

Very simply, it’s about a man’s attempt to bring opera to the jungle by securing and harvesting rubber from an unclaimed, unreachable parcel of land. With the funds gained from the latex harvest, he would be able to build his opulent opera house and entice Enrico Caruso to perform there. His attempts to reach this unreachable area are the heart and visual soul of the movie.

The shortest distance between the negotiable river and the unchartered one he needed for transport was over a small, steep section of land. To reach this passageway and harvest the potential riches involves pulling a multi-ton steam ship over a mountain. It becomes an amazing struggle of relentless drive, reckless energy and the blind passion of this character attempting to achieve his goal while simultaneously supporting the natives own, separate spiritual interests for him completing the task.

The brilliant thing about this movie is that the gap between the fiction presented and the reality experienced in filming it was paper thin. (Love the DVD extras) The incredible, almost still shots of a steam ship slowly pulling itself up an incline under its own power were actually done that way in order for the ship to be pulled up that incline in the movie. The hundreds of movie nave, local extras, the elaborate primitive pulley systems hewn from the local timbers were actually used to complete the shots. Throw in an incredibly volatile actor (Klaus Kinski), unforgiving climate, tentative funding and a desolate location and you have the potential for an enormous failure.

What results is a beautiful piece of filmmaking and a giant, overwhelming inspiration to “make no small plans.”

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Aug 15, 2006

Summer?

My summer has been consumed.

It started innocently enough with an idea to build a “Rococo raft” to travel down the Willamette River. It would be a continuation of the public intervention/performed object pieces I’ve been doing the last few years (Scribe 2003, Podium 2004. ‘05, ‘06) and it was going to be included in this year’s PICA/TBA festival. Very exciting.

I wanted to approach “Float” differently and embrace an over the top, excessive, operatic aesthetic that would be in high contrast to the rather pragmatic, “work day/laborer” strategy I had applied to Scribe and Podium. There would be fire, sound, voice, water, movement, risk and spectacle.

This excess certainly demanded excess: Longer days, more materials, sorer muscles, a bigger tube of burn cream and a larger belief in my ability to “pull this one off.”

Here’s a digital mock up/maquette of the intended look, character and scale of the piece. The theatrical excess even in this low-budget, Photoshopped sketch teased and tempted me to into making this one real.

One of the most rewarding components of this experience so far has been my need (and newly discovered desire) to reach out for support, embrace collaboration and be willing to ask for help. A consuming project like this can send me into a feral, unkempt, hermetic neurosis where dishes remain undone, the bed is a rumpled nest and my social outreach is limited to the clerks at the hardware store and the arguments I have with my stack of bar napkins scribbled with buoyancy rates, swag patterns and gusset designs. I’m thankful for the occasional need to rinse off and be civil.

Three months into the fabrication and I’m amazed at how close the reality of the project is matching the initial concept. But I’m getting ahead of myself … First, it’s all about Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo.”

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