Yesterday was entirely too busy, but parts were insanely entertaining. I kicked off the day taking a shower and then realizing that I couldn't deal with a dirty bathroom any more. I grabbed a sponge and cleaned it top to bottom. It is disgusting how dirty a bathroom can get in just three weeks. I was washing my hands every chance I got after that point; I knew they were clean, but it was kind of like the after effect of the shell shock.
Later on I called Kiani, because she wanted to go to the St. Louis Art Fair. She wanted me to "teach her about art." I met her at the U-City grill in an attempt to kick off the day with some of their excellent corned-beef hash and eggs. Sadly they were out. This was a fact that we were told when we ate there the night before, however, we hoped it would have been rectified in time for brunch. Anyway, extremely hungry and somewhat saddened we made our way into Clayton to see the work. When we got there we were so hot and hungry that we hung a right into Bandanna's for barbecue and AC. It was all that we needed to get our stamina up to take on the fair.
The art fair as a whole was not all that impressive. There was this one artist who made these life size mummy angle baby sculptures. Also there were a lot of photographers who just had these huge color photos of flowers, very lame. Another artist, who we talked to for a bit, we figured was either a conspiracy theorist or a member of the occult. He talked about hiding things from the government and Ganesha, the Hindu god of protection. Kiani and I developed a code word for bad art, "do you smell smoke?" Lets just say that the fair was very smokey that day. There were two saving graces of the show. First was that I go to see
Harold Pickern and his wife Cheryl who I assisted at last years art fair. Also there was this glass artist who was doing something really original with blown colored bowls and a sand blaster. He lines the inside of the bowl with colored glass, covering that with a thick layer of clear, then in the cold stage he covers the colored inside with this plastic tape which resists the sand blaster. The tape is cut into leaf like forms with open spaces in between. when he runs the sandblaster over the surface it goes through the colored layer and exposes the clear. I haven't seen anything like it before. His name is
Jim Engebreson. The images on his site pale in comparison to seeing them in real life.
Afterwards, I headed back to the apartment to finish the clean up I started before. The kitchen was the next room I wanted to get done. I washed, I scrubbed, I organized and then I ate. At around 8:30 I randomly got the urge to build the shelves the I had planned on putting in place of where the refrigerator once was. I ran over to the Depot and grabbed the lumber and cinder-blocks, meanwhile, realizing that Home Depot is a really depressing place at 9:00 on a Saturday.
I went straight to the wood shop after shopping and cut down the planks to fit into the space. Then I headed back, threw them up and took a cold shower. Aurora called soon after that inviting me to a party at the Co-op. It was like this formal to help the Katrina relief fund. I thought that my night was over, but realizing that I would probably know a good half of the people there I got dressed and ready. I invited Emily, one of the sculpture Juniors, to join us.
I swung by Emily's around 12:15. We walked to the Co-op from there. It was healthy walk, and when we got there there were three cop cars in the street and cops wandering around on foot. They weren't doing anything yet, but the party didn't look like it had much of a chance. Its a real shame because it looked like a really good one, plus tons of my friends were there. We went in anyway, and were pushed out about 20 minutes later. We didn't even get a drink. LAME. I was really sad and really wanted to get at least a drop of alcohol in me. So, Emily and I headed back to her place, met up with her friends and found said alcohol...
Jägermeister to be more specific.
Towards the Middle...
