For All Twenty of You

I have about twenty readers on this blog most times, sometimes more, usually less. I expect this with my personal, not-very-mainstream subject matter and style. The good side of that is I can post my secrets here and few people will notice, much less be shocked by them. So today for my loyal readers I will reveal what I have been slaving over for weeks...props for the Jell-O Art Show!

I won't post all of them. You already saw one side of the tall prop that will change with the scenes. I made them detailed purely for my own enjoyment, as most of the details will not be seen from the audience at all and since the show duration is at most three hours and at the least a few minutes, this is obviously a fool's errand. I continue to love being that fool. This is the third year I have made this ridiculously detailed props and have endured the comments of "obsessive" and all the things you mutter under your breath when you come in my house and see them still enshrined for lack of better places to go. They're made of cheap materials and fall apart and are so very ephemeral. To me that is part of their appeal.

Just like Jell-O Art! Nobody knows how long my dried pieces will last and there is no intrinsic value or extrinsic for that matter. They don't appear on the fine-art scale. I don't pay a lot of attention to the many critical pieces of art evaluation that might go into a piece for sale or permanent display, I just have fun with them. I get to interpret the show and my life as an artist and be just as self-indulgent as can be.

And although the show is secret and more fun that way, I think my twenty people deserve a taste of what will be on stage. The photos today show the Jell-O Art Studio, which will appear briefly in the show and will actually be on display throughout the show, on the stage. Go ahead and go up there and look at them if you want. (Don't trip over anything as it might be slightly hazardous with cords, etc.) Maybe I'll put them closer to the front than they will be in the play. You will get too many clues about what will happen but maybe that will help you if you get stuck in the back and can't see the props behind all the kooky cladded *women*.

The Eugene Weekly gave us a great write-up with a photo of one of my pieces in a jar. I think this is the one I gave to Indi for her birthday last year. I've made several jars now and did so to keep the pieces from getting dusty on the shelves of their collectors. I will eventually do more, but if you have any cool jars you don't want, I'll take them. It makes for a good photo, so thank you Weekly! I wrote a joke letter to them about the slip that left out the Men of the Radar Angels, which contained rather violent images I am sorry for now, but it was all in fun. I'm glad I left out the part where I called them Fascist Republicans since there are so many people these days who don't get jokes.

Have to clean up all the scraps of these projects now and get out the sewing machine. Here's your preview!