It’s done. Open Studios 2008 has come and gone, a big success, with many happy artists and visitors having had a good time. I spent much of the day working on Fluids, and then lookylooing as it crumbled and melted its way back to the earth. There are just too, too many photos for me to even really do a play-by-play, but here are a few that capture my experience of working on this awesome project. All of our Fluids related images are available for your perusal and enjoyment in this Flickr Set. More will be coming soon, as we hired AGCC Studio Artist Slobodan Dimitrov to photograph the whole event. Those photos will get their own post when they come in and get scanned. Photos from this and every other re-invention of Fluids are visible in LACMA’s Fluids Flickr group.
We started the day by laying out a tape template to mark the outer dimensions of the object. That’s San Pedro artist, educator and occasional DJ Nicholas Klemek assisting me in the process. How to make perfect square corners? If you make a mark three feet (or whatever measuring unit you prefer, my metric brothers out there) from the corner on one side, and four feet from the corner on its neighboring side, and the distance between the two is exactly five feet, then you’ve got a perfect, 90 degree corner. It’s nice to bring some ancient mathematical truth into the construction of any geometric sculpture, don’t you think?
Laying that first block. Just hundreds and hundreds more to go!
Here Allen Teng, an El Camino College I.D.E.A.S. Club volunteer, makes his “ice face” as he hauls a block. Members of the I.D.E.A.S. Club made up the core of our participants, and club President & AGCC preparator Michele Hubacek was my co-coordinator for the site.
Volunteers scoring the ice. The ice surfaces were scored with multi-pronged icepicks to create a better surface for gripping. The woman second from the left in the bucket hat is Toby Tannenbaum, who alongside her LACMA co-worker Michele Urton, made Fluids at Angels Gate a possibility. They were incredibly enthusiastic about doing Fluids in the Harbor Area.
ECC I.D.E.A.S Club Volunteer Meredith Bradfield peeks through a gap in the ice. Meredith’s sister Hillary painted all the Fluids signs, like the one at top, for the event. The signs are going to be on display at MOCA as soon as I run them down there.
How I spent much the process. I did a lot of icepicking to make plugs to fill small gaps (like the one shown above) in the structure. I learned one thing about using an icepick - there’s really no safe pocket or place to carry an icepick, so I spent much of the time carrying mine in my mouth like a pirate.
A happening isn’t really that happening without viewers. I suppose that’s what separates it from an action, and the viewers are anything but passive, which separates a happening from most performance art. These two girls were our official “cutest viewers.” They belong to new Studio Artist Chris James and everyone thought it was adorable when they started tasting the structure.
Lifting ice to the 7th layer. A completed Fluids is nine layers tall. At the 7th layer we made the transition to working on ladders which slowed things up a bit.
ECC I.D.E.A.S. Club Volunteer Geoffrey lays 2nd to last block. Geoffrey really pulled his weight on the top two layers of Fluids, as every block had to be carried up a ladder and carefully placed, and in a hurry.
I got the privilege of placing both the first and the last block. The top two layers were completed in a mad dash, as we were getting concerned that the structure was rapidly melting and losing stability. Building an outdoor ice structure on on of the hottest days of the year is a bit of a pickle. On one hand, it’s blazing hot and you’ve got all the ice you could ever dream of. On the other hand your material is trying to lessen itself as you work with it.
Fluids, completed. It stayed intact like this for about an hour before it really started to melt and collapse. Michele Urton from LACMA remarked that ours was more blue than other structures, that they all look different, filter and reflect light differently. All I know is that it was beautiful while it lasted. I have some theories as to how to build a slightly more structurally sound and longer lasting Fluids, but I need another truckload of ice to test them. Anyone want to give me $3000 worth of ice? Maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to build it all over again.
People came and went throughout the day, so the above group shot is a mishmash of viewers and participants who made this happening possible. Some people signed a wavier just to get the privilege of carrying a single block, and others worked non-stop, from start to finish.
I think when it comes to kids, you can have multiple “most adorable viewers.” Here is Sam and his Pepsi wielding momma/personal mobility unit, El Camino College Professor Karen Whitney, who first brought this project to our attention. Thank the electronic gods for E-mail forwarding!. Behind her and to the left in her “I (heart) Frank” shirt is LACMA curator Michele Urton.
Older viewers like to touch the ice too…
The first part of the structure to really collapse was the “leaning corner.” Our Fluids was built on a slight incline, so this corner was born most likely to fall first.
The corner collapses further. Just like everyone likes to slow down to see an auto accident, the collapse of Fluids makes viewers rapt with attention. I’m hoping someone got an awesome shot of the collapse in motion. It fell apart in about four major collapses, convieniently largely falling within itself.
All that remained at the end of the evening, a filed of rounded, tumbled, melting ice, a park mystery to the people and animals who scurry around after dark.
The recreation of Fluids is coordinated by LACMA and supported in part by an in-kind donation from the Union Ice Company. Happenings were coordinated by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and made possible by generous support from the Getty Foundation. The exhibition Allan Kaprow-Art as Life is organized by the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and is on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA from March 23 to June 30, 2008. Fluids at Angels Gate Cultural Center was also made possible by the generous support and labor of the members of the El Camino College I.D.E.A.S. Club.
Technorati Tags: Allan Kaprow, happening, Fluids, Angels Gate Park, Angels Gate, AGCC, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Open Studios, art, contemporary art, ice, ice sculpture, sculpture, temporary, I.D.E.A.S. Club, LACMA, MOCA
