i got up at 4 to finish pieces for the show, which mainly meant cleaning the frame glass and then putting the collage on top of that and then the foam board on the back of that. i decided to paper the backs too, which i’ve never done, and then i actually titled and signed them(?) for posterity’s(posterior’s?) sake so that when i die people can spend hours of fun trying to decipher my signature. i’m shooting for fame but only after i’m dead. we wouldn’t wanna make anything easy for anyone, would we? i met the “agent” at the space which is an upscale optometrist’s office(?) on mississippi at around 11 am, wookie had already come and gone and left behind the batch of pieces she drove down there with and when i walked into the shop the agent was beginning to figure out where he thought they should hang. i had 11 or 12 collages w/me of varying sizes and the space had one large bluish wall and 2 off-white walls and we had to hang the pieces from these cable things dangling from the ceiling, it was hard to get them straight but it ended up looking good in there, it didn’t take long and was pretty painless and the “agent” seemed happy w/things and after an hour i bailed and came back home.
openings are weird. you basically sit or stand around for 3 hours while your friends come and go or come and stay or whatever. your stuff’s on the walls and they give it a cursory look and say things like “looks great” or “good work” and if there’s alcohol they usually drink but not too much last night except for jessie showed up w/paul and they got beers and then jessie proceeded to drop his bottle onto the floor and while the glass didn’t shatter there was beer all over the place. i hadn’t seen jessie in 6 or 7 years and hadn’t seen paul in maybe 5 years and they seemed pretty much unchanged, jessie was wearing a “millions of dead cops” t-shirt( MDC being an old hardcore band that jessie is apparently now playing with) and paul was sporting his colors, he was wearing a red “CCCP” shirt w/a hammer and sickle(it’s nice to be friends w/unapologetic commies) and had brought his son fin who is now much larger than the last i saw him and seemed(somehow) mature and well-adjusted. paul even brought his wife alicia(i married those 2 many years ago) who had battled her social anxiety and made an appearance. so that was fun.
but here comes wookie! her and her mom and leni had been supping across the street at laughing planet but finally showed up and i got to introduce her to my friends who she had never met and surprisingly friends kept straggling in, right when i would think things were winding down and it was time to bail someone else would show up. there was larry and jen, one of my favorite couples although in our case it’s one of those things where you see each other once every 2 years and each time say something like “we gotta do this more often” and then don’t see each other again for 2 years. me and larry used to stay up ’til dawn drinking, any visit from larry meant a long night and on one of those long nights he finally told me why he didn’t invite me to his wedding a few years before and his reason was that i never really called him or made much of an effort to get together back then but the truth is that i never called or tried to get together w/ANYBODY, i was a go-to-work-get-home-drink-beer-alone-in-my-room-and-maybe-later-on-play-music-or-smoke-some-pot kinda guy. he said he had finally realised that and was sorry and i said fine and spun lou reed records all night and that was the 1st time that lou’s solo stuff really connected with him and so we had solved 2 issues in one long evening.
then the neighbors showed up and karen had a glass of wine and stan ate about half of the mixed nuts that i brought for snacks which was good because noone else really wanted any. they sat on the couch with me and stan thought it looked great in there and that i had done a good job on the framing which was nice because i spent a lot of time getting them together. a little while later kamins showed up which was great, kamins is an older guy and something of a hermit and i was able to introduce him around and got a couple of pictures of him and wookie and they looked happy and chummy together even though that was the 1st time they had ever met. kamins was very complimentary of the art but didn’t bust out his checkbook or anything and instead busted a move and left shortly after he had arrived.
and here comes chris! young and tall and kind and leni liked him right off the bat, they hung out on the sidewalk and played hide and seek for quite a while and chris and larry struck up a conversation and it’s always nice when your friends end up getting along, it helps. soon after suzanne and henry and their daughter avery showed up, i NEVER see them so that was nice of them to come. and did i mention marty? well she was there too.
the night started wearing down about 7:30 and the office began to close so we adjourned to the street to hang out a little bit longer and no sooner had the doors been shut then here comes kelly and i would say her last name because we all got in the habit of using her first and last names all the time because there was already another kelly but i don’t use last names in this blog for obvious reasons. brooke took leni home and larry and me and jen and kelly went to a bar down the street, it’s great being a non-drinker at a bar because they figure you’re a designated driver and ply you w/non-alcoholic beverages for free, sometimes you have to pay just for the 1st but last night i didn’t have to fork over anything. i was in the bathroom relieving myself when i got a message from christy saying that her and margo had just showed up for the show and there was noone at the place, and what the fuck? so i went back to the office and got them and then there was 6 of us at the bar and it was again nice that all my friends got along, it’s nice to see people make the effort to get along with other people because with a little effort they usually succeed. except for right-wing fucks who always mess everything up. but none of them showed up so all was good.
and that was my night, my first art show in 5 years and hopefully one of many that i will have in the foreseeable future. the “agent” is supposedly on the case and we’ll wait and see what he comes up with and in the meantime i got my scissors and my glue stick and i haven’t been working on any new pieces for a while and it’s time to get that horse out of the barn. art is a good thing to do and a nice thing to be around and i’m lucky that i get to do both. (up above is “king shit”)
infinity trigger art 