painted garden

an email i sent:

"

3 march 2009

subject: saturday and/or sunday morning?

i thought we could get together for a couple of hours and mess around with paint / video / collage / talking about spring planting / growth? we could do it at my studio [or maybe griggs' studio (lindalinda, if you have time / keenness)] -

could be really fun. short time, energy burst, we make something together?

"

another one:

"

6 march 2009

subject: saturday & or sunday morning details

linda & i will be ready to go at 9am both days

hope you can join us

bring anything you want to use to make something

we'll have some paint, collage stuff, video projectors, cameras...

improvisational, figuring-it-out and just doing, instinctual artmaking, this will not just be a seed we will make something grow, more-or-less instantly

if you want to bring someone along, please feel free to bring someone along. but a collaboration between linda/susan/erik or linda/sarah/erik or linda/athena/jeff/erik or linda/philippa/erik or any other combination sounds really fun and exciting to me.

linda, see you tomorrow! susan, sarah, philippa, jeff, athena, isaiah = hope to see you tomorrow and/or sunday!

- erik

"

collaboration can go really smoothly or it can go absolutely nowhere. maybe nobody shows up. maybe somebody is thinking x and somebody else is thinking y and they both get frustrated. but saturday was magic. i can't think of how i'd rather spend lifetime.

linda was already there when i arrived - on a saturday morning - i was late - maybe 9:15am. we set up two computers, two projectors, and a video camera facing a wall. susan showed up with oil crayons - one of the amazing things about the day was how everybody kept showing up with different materials. everyone came with an idea which made the piece grow.

anyway we hung up a brown piece of paper on the wall (soil). we projected jeff's growing roots animation and my plant animation onto that, one in each projector. i got out some paint. we started drawing and painting.








































linda had the idea of not just collaging, but folding out leaves so that they hung out into space. she provided green paper. susan had brought newspaper and cardboard with her. we used all three.






































































































the other linda showed up, bearing tulips and plant cuttings. in they went. we were all painting, drawing, collaging. at this point there was enough vegetation that the soil was mostly obscured, so i put my dynamic plants-growing animation piece into the other projector as well.

susan was bothered by the projection moving but the painting / drawing / collage remaining static. we put the fan on the piece, everything was moving.














































































































all of this was a performance for the video camera. the final piece will be a linear video of what we made - essentially an animation. (i think.)









































at some point susan left, linda left, philippa arrived; she brought seed catalogs with lots of pictures fo plants and flowers, and fabric. she also wanted things moving towards the camera. we strung thread through the studio and began to collage out into space.























































































this is how we ended the day saturday, maybe 3pmish (before heading to singing with linda, then volta solo and finally brooklyn for dinner with ruthie & ellen).




































i've been wanting to collaborate with jeff, linda, linda, philippa, and susan for a long time. i wish we could do more. (i mean i hope we can do more.)

if i do nothing else this year, 2009 will have been a good year.