I picked up a manky old camera on e-bay for $8. It came today. Thanks for the tip, Jody!

I didn’t finish building the camera light blocking cravistan (not shown) until it was quite dark out. It still needs some work, and I can’t wait to see how things look in the sun.

I like the weird, scratchy images. It’s like looking at the world through Tom Waits voice.

Reporting from the barn in the backyard,
this is the Director of Alternative Processes of the barn
with his odd companions wishing you a good evening.

More than 350,000 people were expected to attend this year’s ArtScape, now in its 29th year and the biggest yet. ArtScape is America’s largest free Art festival and generates more than $25 million in revenue. Every year, the citizens of the east coast unite to collectively bake our brains under an atomically hot sun.  Here are some pics from this year.

We made circus peanut shirts, as a family, using left over paint from the giant peanut. Making shirts has become a tradition.

There is something really cool about watching people hug art. I watch a guy actually LICK the circus peanut, but couldn’t get my camera out in time. There are no teeth marks. Yet.

I received some much needed Art Therapy on the Charles Street bridge from Cocoa, while Leezle manned the phone.

The girls and I visited our comics at the Comic Strip exhibit at Penn station (previously discussed).

Here’s the Midway banner on the Charles Street bridge.

The girls illustrated messenger bags at the Target tent.

The art cars were amazing, as was the air guitar exhibition.

I tried to glue circus peanuts to the Throne of Glory, but it was in constant use.

Me and my baked brains.

Here are a few of my favorite Sondheim finalists in the Fox building gallery.

Here, There, Anywhere.

I’m sad it’s over, and relieved everything went well. Now it’s back to the drawing board.

Do you like Circus Peanuts? Please cast a vote. I must know.

The GIANT Circus Peanut is finished. It’s installed on Mount Royal Avenue in Baltimore, by MICA, and will be on display through November as part of the Here, There, Anywhere exhibit. This is the  “making of” post.   I had some help and thank the following peeps.

• My friends who lent their ears, ideas and support. I promise to stop talking about circus peanuts soon. Very soon. I swear.

• Kim Domanski and ArtScape 2010

• RJ spent a hot afternoon in the July sun moving it.
• My Dawn gave me gallons of painting advice and  spent a full day applying Spackle. She  made sure it kicks ass.
• My little peanuts helped paint it, and provided a lot of company, interest and opinions.

My initial thought was to use a metal pipe in the center, and build an armature from chicken wire that I could then “paper mache” with house wrap, Baltimore City Papers and the like. My concern was that I’d have to shred the house wrap into slices so thin that it would take weeks to get it smooth, and also that it would be too heavy.

Here’s what I ended up doing instead.

I made a template by piecing together paper into an 8′ x 4′ sheet. I cut out the shape of the peanut and taped the edges with packing tape.

I made the base of the peanut from 2×8′s, held together with decking screws.

I put half-inch PVC pipe in the base for support – very light, and very strong. And, as a bonus, I put some actual circus peanuts into the pipe before gluing the pieces together.

I was going to have three pairs of pipe support, but it was too much, so I removed the center section.

Once the base was assembled, I cut out the “slices” from sections of Owens Corning foam insulation. I used vinyl gutter downspout sections as spacers, held in place with heavy duty foam safe construction adhesive. The bottom vinyl spacer is screwed and glued to the base, and then glued to each section of foam. It ended up being very sturdy.

The original idea was to sculpt the sides to be somewhat rounded, but it proved too difficult to accomplish (well) in the time I had left, so I removed them. I used bamboo skewers as supports between the layers. They are cheap, strong and I needed something to hold the foam spray in place until it hardened.

I’ve used this foam in my home before – it was satisfying playing with it here. Once it cured, I carved the exterior shape, and the divots on the face.

Dawn did most of the spackling and made it look awesome.

I’m pretty sure it weighs over 300 lbs – it was difficult to move and harder to install. :) Just ask RJ.

Please come to ArtScape and see it in person!

Happy Jellyfish night.

Baltimore is the city with ART and syringes in the road.

The title of this installation was informed by this:

When I was a kid, I got in really bad trouble for playing with matches.  I had a lot of army men, which I thought were kind of boring. I decided they needed to undergo genetic anthropomorphic mutation to become more interesting/useful. So, in my basement laboratory, with my assistant little-boy-from-next-door, I set out to create better toys. The trouble was, little-boy-from-next-door burned himself with a match, which brought a world of parent trouble down on me and my genetic anthropomorphic mutation toy laboratory. If I’d had a tail, I wouldn’t have needed an assistant in the first place and wouldn’t have lost my laboratory.

Some of my creations were awesome – a three armed ax wielding warrior with no head, a two headed cowboy, a barrel chested headless monster…etc.

Being an adult is awesome because I don’t have to worry about parents shutting down my lab.  I only have to worry about the fumes from melting plastic. NOTE: KIDS – DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT PARENTAL SUPERVISION.

I’ll be back – there’s some pretty interesting action happening in the backyard right now.

I got a call a couple of weeks back from ArtScape wanting to know how I actually intend to build an 8′ to 12′ circus peanut. I was notified today that my proposal has been accepted.

So, now, I get to build an 8′ to 12′ circus peanut. It’s going to be a fabulous spring, ya?

Circus peanuts were invented sometime in the 1800′s. They taste like bananas, although Wikipedia says that they were initially orange flavored. I suppose the original maker intended to “out weird” the creator of cotton candy.  Four of the major candy manufactures still make circus peanuts, though no one seems to hold a patent. I read somewhere that they aren’t easy to make, either, because they are molded instead of extruded like other shaped candy. And they are solid marshmallow.

I remember getting these around Easter as a kid. They used to inspire the sensation of motion sickness, and I’d just let them petrify long after the good candy had vanished into my gullet. The very last memory I have of these involved a great aunt who was having some sort of diabetic fit. She pleaded with my mom for  something sweet, and you guessed it – all we had for her gullet were petrified circus peanuts.

I have another childhood memory I’d like to share with you. Our house came with a really old refrigerator in the back of the basement. It had rounded corners, kind of like a giant tombstone. One summer, my parents put something in there – maybe a cucumber or zucchini or half a snake or something from our garden.  It was forgotten until one day, I looked in the fridge and found the blackened mummified remains of whatever it was. It just sat there, haunting the cold, tombstone shaped fridge, like a forgotten petrified turd. I was obsessed with it, and, I’ll admit, a little afraid of it.

Back to the present day, I bought a bag of circus peanuts for research purposes last week. The guy in line behind me said, “I’m glad SOMEONE likes those things. I’ve never seen anyone buy them.”

“I don’t actually like them,” I replied. And then I had to explain this project. I’m going to be doing a lot of that in the next several months.

In the years since my diabetic great  aunt and mummified frozen remains of my childhood, I’ve often stopped in the store and wondered at circus peanuts. They are strangely beautiful and yet slightly horrifying, like some orange, forgotten, mummified remnant in the tombstone refrigerator of life. It is worthwhile to think about them.

Since I’m not teaching this term, I’ve been exploring painting (more) and comparing oil painting to using acrylics to using watercolor. I’ve spent at least one evening a week using oils for the past six weeks or so. Which is to say, I still know very little about oil painting.

Oil Paint

• Expensive
• Takes FOREVER to dry. Because of this, I think it’s messy. No matter how careful I am, I always get it on my teeth
• Toxic
• Requires a lot of planning
• Dries shiny, depending on how much medium is used

Acrylic Paint

• Cheap
• Dries VERY quickly
• Plastic
• Forgiving
• Dries shiny, unless matte medium is added

Watercolor

• Sorta Cheap
• Dries quickly with a blow drier
• Nice color saturation
• Pain in the ass. Requires a lot of skill and patience
• Dries flat, not shiny at all

(I’m still working on this one)

It can be nice that oil paint stays wet. I’ve noticed that I can spend a lot of time mixing colors with no penalty, and I tend to get closer to what I’m looking at with oil paint. On the other hand, I don’t have very much time to paint/make art/draw/mix colors, so I appreciate that acrylics dry quickly – I build layers super fast. And I can’t really build watercolor layers…it reactivates once wet and runs.

A value study

Some of my favorite things. Especially the book. Painted with iPhone.

In progress

I $%^& dropped it right after taking this picture. I haven’t swept the barn in weeks. So, there was a lot of schmuz stuck in the paint, which I worked out with a palette knife. If this was acrylic, there would have been no problem.

So far, I still prefer acrylic, then watercolor, then oil. As I become more skilled in what I’m trying to accomplish, I may appreciate oil  painting more. But, I doubt it. It gets on my teeth.