Archive for January, 2008

ABC love song, pictures made with Sweethearts

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

This project took quite a feat to get off the ground. I remember wanting to do a fun piece for Valentines Day and somehow decided upon the ABC’s of love. I took a stab at writing it and couldn’t really put a lot together myself. So I posted a blog up on MySpace asking people to come up with ABC’s that were sweet and funny and the letters had to represent objects. It got about 30 people joining in and so I printed out all of their lists and sat down highlighting ones that I liked. From that point I picked certain ones and made a list. I had to haul that list around with me for a number of days, deleting some and editing others so they rhymed. I plinked around on a synthesizer and came up with a tune, went to a friends house to record the piano aspect. I then recorded myself singing and pieced the audio together.

Then I got started designing my recording space. I wanted to have the camera on the floor looking up but I ran into major problems. Since I would be working on a piece of glass the camera would be looking through the glass and there were tons of reflections on the glass. Long story short, I had to piece together a little recording spot that didn’t have any reflections, the light had to be limited etc. It was a total pain.

Then I sketched out my images on some post its. At this point I was ready to begin and wasn’t sure how the quality was going to turn out. I set to work separating out all of the colors of hearts and had a bowl for each. I put together a few of the pictures and was satisfied with the quality, I say satisfied because I was working with such a large pixel that the detail was difficult. Anyway, I spent about 14 hours just piecing together the pictures then I spent 7 hours in front of the computer cutting and splicing the video. ugh. But I am quite happy with the final product. Something very different for me because of the music. Quite fun.

Here is the original poem.

A- I love your adams apple
B- you’re beautiful without beer goggles
C- you are better than chocolate rain

D- You never stop giving like a dairy cow
E- You are tastier than a carmel apple empanada from taco bell
F- My love for you grows like fungus

G- We are tight like OJ’s gloves
H- Your hands I would love to kiss
I- I want to hear your voice more than my Ipod
J- Screw Mars and Venus on Jupiter is where our love fits

K- You make my heart jump like a kangaroo
L- my heart bubbles like a lava lamp when I’m with you
M- I’m drawn to you like a powerful magnet

N- I’ll protect you like a ninja
O- Like an Octopus my hug will surround ya
P- We fit together like perfect pieces in a puzzle

Q- You be my jukebox; i’ll be your quarter
R- I’d enjoy the itch if you were my rash
S- I will always love you, wait, what’s your salary?
T- our love, like the Titanic, will make a splash

U- our love stands out like a unibrow
V- Your touch is like Viagra, oh wow
W- You have everything I want and need just like Walmart

X- I’ll xerox your photo all day and tomorrow
Y- you can be the string and I will be the yo yo
Z- your sexy highlights remind me of a zebra

If you are interested in sending someone an 8×12 photo of this piece I put together click here. Any purchases directly support Goodbye Art and my other large projects. Thanks so much!

I hope you all got a kick out of this piece. I had a blast with it.

Wine — change up

Monday, January 21st, 2008

As you know January is supposed to be snow but it has been so cold this weekend that I decided to take advantage of it and do a “freezing properties” project instead. I saw the temp was going to be well below zero and knew I had to jump on the opportunity. I may even stock pile a couple goodbye art project this week seeing as it will be so cold.

I don’t remember how this piece came about exactly. I remember trying to find something that would make water freeze at a higher temperature and discovered that only pressure would. This made sense but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t something I was missing. In my search I ran across all different descriptions of things that make water freeze at lower temperatures, wine being one of them. I have played with colors of liquid before and thought if the right temps came along I might have to freeze something we normally don’t. I just thought wine would be fun because it fits that category and could serve well in the right context.


I grabbed a pane of glass and put a little rubber ridge around the outside. I got it as flat as I could and poured 6 liters of red wine into it. I went back later with a soldering gun and proceeded to cut out the wine I didn’t want. When that was done I poured a couple liters of white wine into the remaining area. Let that solidify and then brought it in, set up my cameras and sat back to watch.

I was rather impressed with how the pigment in the wine separated from the water. Pretty cool.

If you are able to help support Goodbye Art it will help make future projects more grand and impressive. You can purchase a signed picture of this piece (until the 28th) here. Thanks so much!

Pee

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

No it’s not really pee. Come on. Seriously. The furthest portion is 30 feet away and 15 feet wide. No one in the world has the pressure to push pee that far. And if they did it would rupture other parts of the body. ugh.

Moving on.

So I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of yellow food coloring. Which was actually hard to find. It is usually mixed in with a multi pack. I also bought a sprayer, the small hand held one. Then I headed for the park. I hunted around for a part of the park that was out of view of the rest and had a rather short steep incline. Then did a little planning. I knew I had to make the picture in between takes in the video but it couldn’t be obvious that I had traipsed around making foot prints all over. This was crucial as I would have to work from these steps to make the picture. I then recorded the first part of the vid telling people what I was planning to do. Then I pointed the camera at the ground and turned it off. Then with water bottle in hand I walked in the steps I already made and proceeded to spray in the picture walking backwards at times. I only goofed up a couple times but not noticeable enough. Then I went back to the camera, aimed it as best I could at the same spot I had last recorded at, turned it on and brought it back up to my face and finished off the video. haha. simple. The tricky part was trying to keep my perspective appropriate while on a hill side, as the further away portion had to be drawn larger. Since it was Lassie it worked out just fine.

If you are able to help support Goodbye Art it will help make future projects more grand and impressive. You can purchase a picture of this piece here. Thanks so much!

Wall of snow.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

This piece took some great timing. The weather was such a factor in this and it couldn’t have been better. The temperature made it up to 40 degrees that day and then to 25 when night fell. This allowed for me to easily build the wall with soft snow and then when I was chipping it away it would freeze up which enabled me to make a very thin piece.

I was going to start back with goodbye art with “freezing properties” being my theme for January but then the temp went up. I made the decision to switch to “snow” so I could actually get some pieces done. Although I am currently working on a “freezing properties” piece for next month, just because I have no idea what temperatures February will bring.

The wall for this piece is about 6feet wide by 6feet tall and 1foot thick. I picked a foot because I was pretty darn sure my light wouldn’t shine through. I then had to run to home depot and get a flood light, they are surprisingly cheap, only 20 bucks. I then dragged out my cameras and extension cords and the like. I got everything set up and very nervously started to chisel away on the wall. After the first 20 min I became ecstatic upon realizing the wall was freezing as I worked. At first I set out to make a three tone image but quickly realized I could put a fair amount of subtle shading in it. I then spent about 3 hours rubbing snow off of the wall and slapping more back up to make my changes. I wasn’t totally happy with the final product because it doesn’t look perfectly like him. But I settled to having it resemble him and be happy with the time I spent on it as an experiment. Which after all is the point of these projects.

Destroying this piece was rather fun. I don’t think I have ever jumped through a wall of snow.

If you are able to help support Goodbye Art it will help make future projects more grand and impressive. You can purchase a picture of this piece here. Thanks so much!