before

Well, my sweet readers….. things with my installation are moving right along! Last week began the big steps in my installation at Arts Lehigh. I seem to have an enormous amount of anxiety about how fast times flies by but yet have a firm sense of calm that everything is totally under control. I don’t know how that is possible but that is the waves that I can feel throughout every muscle of my being.

I figure I will post a bit on my progress with my piece. I guess I should confess that I feel like the photographs barely do my progress justice! and that I feel I get caught up in minutia but it is minutia that will go a long way…. such as taping off the kick guard around the floor molding so that it is white (not allowed to paint it or replace it) and to changing all the faceplates to white white white….

My experience so far with doing an installation such as this one have required enormous negotiation (and maybe some energetic pleading) with the powers that be that allow me to do the things I want to do. I got back from winter break and my group of awesome former students had been checking up on me and exclaimed “we thought your walls would be torn open by now!” Well, no… that took a little bit longer than expected due to getting the clearance to be able to do so. I was amazed to even get the go ahead and really expected far more resistance than what I received. It’s not that they welcomed me tearing out walls with open arms but they were more worried about my painting skills than they were about my demolition. Go figure! It seems as though however, that they are quite impressed with the quality of my paint job and- so much in fact I am invited to repaint the room when I’m done…. could that be what is considered the double edged sword?

neutralized

yes.... even the radiator

So I am thrilled to say the wall was opened up without too much of a hitch. I know that the university is only allowing me one wall but I’m now thinking of doing a little more pleading to perhaps tackle another one. It’s all for the greater good, right?

I ended up not opening the wall on my own. I was so freaked that I decided to ask the facilities guys if they would do the honor and reluctantly, they did. Honestly, they were pretty nice about it even though I think they would have preferred to watch me do it. They didn’t strike me as wanting to do a whole lot of work that morning but what can you do…..

the big day!

this flips my wig

After everything started to look a bit more “heather-y”, I headed out to Lowes to buy supplies and loaded up my studio to set up shop at Arts Lehigh. It’s funny to see my “stuff’ in another place. Adriano joked he got “Saw’s” passport all ready for him to make the trip. (“Saw” is actually Adriano’s…. one day I will have my own as well as a sweet table saw and maybe even a cute little bandsaw. A girl can dream, right?)

One of the things that has happened to me since art school are the weird questions that Lowes or any hardware store worker may have about the contents of my shopping cart. A Lowes guy followed me around on Friday trying to figure out what I wanted to do with a pile of chalk, white duct tape, an abundance of outlet faceplates, and 20 1 x 3s. I don’t think that has been the strangest cart I have had before but whatever- he still continued to be more perplexed the more he asked about my work.

I once saw the artist, Nick Cave, give a lecture. I think the thing I remembered most about his talk was that he got tired of answering the questions about what he does. He would buy the dollar store out of feather dusters and toilet brushes and the check out ladies would ask what he was intending on doing with 100 feather dusters. Instead of describing that he is a performance artist and will create a garment to perform in- he states that he has a cleaning business. I don’t know what my problem is about doing something like that….. I’m a terrible liar. Awful! My parent’s told me never to lie and I pretty much don’t. Ever. So it’s hard for me to tell a white lie to a Lowes guy without feeling a twinge in my stomach so therefore I am regulated to explaining my weird self to a stranger. I think I could learn to lie sometime in my life…. just for these little things, I guess.

So there you go, a fun fact about heather.  Note that one, readers- it will be on the quiz.

heather-izing the wall