Jell-O Show 2012

Hurray! The date has been set and the theme chosen for this year's Jell-O Art Show. It will be at Maude Kerns Art Center as usual, on a Saturday night from 5-8 pm as usual, but unlike the past two years, it will not be the first Saturday in April! It will be March 31, which seems like divine intervention for this Saturday Market vendor.

Now I won't have to try to do way too much in one day. The Jell-O Show is already a very big day. Not only do I "have to" make some kind of remarkable personal piece, I like to make lots of tacky foods for the Tacky Food Buffet, and I also enjoy helping decorate the hall and assist the performers if needed. In addition I make and sell the t-shirts, and they have to be brilliant, which is a big project all in itself. March is always very busy, particularly that last week.

I might even make some jiggly Jell-O for my display this year. I love the dried and will certainly do something with it, but the jiggle is a big part of the fun too. The wet Jell-O is such a frustrating and bewitching art material that I kind of miss it.

The theme is Occupy/End of the World for 2012. That should be a fascinating merge and I can just picture the Radars rolling a giant Mayan calendar replica out onto the stage and puzzling over it like the apes from the planet. (I would even be willing to help make the replica, if any Radars are reading this.) We could build it out of protest signs and turn it around into the Occupy mode. I'm sure the performers are already making lists of songs to parody and thinking about apocalyptic costumes. It's the Jell-Occupyocalypse. Cue the bongos.

Lots of us Radar Angels are political activists or were in the past at least, and are still radicals, so it will be a fun opportunity to add our humor to the political discourse. Political Jell-O can be tedious and derivative and repetitious and plebian just like any other kind of political art, and I have done my part in making political Jell-O. I once used an AR-15 (AK-47-looking rifle) to make a mold to put in a coffin surrounded by flowers and Jell-O bullets and clips and had a whole thing going about burying violence. I dressed the mannequin legs in camo.

Speaking of the mannequin legs, I had my doubts when I used them in last year's sculpture, Hope. I need them back. This winter I started taking parts of the display and putting them to other purposes. The mask can stand on its own, as can the bird. The floral panels look great on the walls of my living room, and the little seascapes with grass and waves are presently being made into little mermaid perches. The figure itself, which I appropriated glibly from Celeste, might be restored to its original condition, though the additional snakeskin will probably stay on it. For it to be a part of the Jell-O Art Museum, it should really be in its original condition, which was elegant and graceful. Hard to dance covered with orchids. So Hope will be transformed. That's the theme of the beginning of the movement.

The Jell-O Art Museum concept is alive and well and I am designing a sign for it and have in mind to build a scale model of it. I probably won't be making either one out of gelatin though I will try to work that in. I don't know how much of it will be realized in the short winter period I have for Jell-O Art.

I also don't know where I am going with the Jell-O Art retail I tried last season. It wasn't a failure, and had lots of fun aspects that could continue to develop, but it's pretty distracting at Market and cut into my clothing sales I believe. At HM it was kind of cluttered. I don't know what to do with it. Last night I dreamed I was eating all of the shells and flowers, and they were nearly all gone when I realized it. Not that I would, but it was funny as a dream. Apparently I want to be done with them. Maybe it just means I am hungry for transformation.

Make some Jell-O, artists! At least start thinking about it.