I moved into a warehouse space in Jacksonville, Florida. There is something magical about Jacksonville. I feel in love with everything. It's like home, but full of new friends and incredible recourses. I befriended a crew of homeless traveler kids who refer to themselves as 'The Dirty Kids'. I gave them shelter for two nights in my warehouse-studio in exchange for some help with painting. We put down three coats of primer, turning the space from a puke-green den into a bright white sanctuary. I still had nothing for furniture, so I walked around the neighborhood looking for scrap wood. I found two beautiful heartily constructed boxes, which I picked up with my car and brought back to the space. They worked perfectly for table supports, as well as storage containers. I found an old door which I laid across the top of the two wooden boxes, creating a lovely work bench. Shaun gave me a roll out rug to lay in front of it. He said it would keep my feet warm while I worked through the cold nights. It is very exciting building a studio, it is close to all I can think about, how to optimize a space for art-making.
I walked across the parking lot (my warehouse is one of five light-industrial spaces within a gated complex) to the Blue Buddha food distribution warehouse to study pallet construction. I thought it would be efficient to use pallets for the construction of shelves, tables and flat files. My friend Adrian came over to inquire what I was doing, then referred me to a pallet refurbishing company just one street behind my warehouse. Chris, the owner of the pallet company was very accommodating, offering free pallets to me. I took four beautiful pallets ( I did not know there were so many different varieties of pallets!), and began disassembling them as preliminary work to building a flat file box to store my works on paper.
The warehouse space has an alarm system, which should be set every night. Such, I have been sleeping in my car so the morning crew can walk into their shops with assurance that the alarm was set upon my exiting. I believe after some time I will talk with my fellow tenants about sleeping in the warehouse itself.
I bought a great camera, in part to document my own work, and in part to document process painting shots for my friend, Shaun Thurston. I spent several days out on the north side of Jacksonville with Shaun, documenting his installation of five animal portraits on the exterior wall of a thrift shop. The murals were pro-bono, as the thrift store is an annex of a local humane society which has made Jacksonville a 'no-kill' animal rescue area. The documentation went very well. I got some good shots and Shaun and I established a rhythm to our dialogue with passers-by. It was incredible how manny folks pulled their cars over to talk about how beautiful the paintings were, most knew Shaun's work already- he has built quite a reputation for himself over the years in Jacksonville with his prolific mural and gallery presence. So many people wanted their buildings done, or their homes, or portraits, or their cars, or churches. Shaun, being a busy man, appreciated my talking with the potential clients, tapering the offers to those that were interesting, for a good cause, or likewise.
I made a trip to Tallahassee to begin painting two murals for Pyramid Inc., an education center for adults with developmental disabilities. Upon arriving on Friday, I went straight to the wall to have a look at the spot. I met with Gary who owned a concrete finishing business. He'd just finished a job in the Pyramid building, and notified me that it would be four days before I could enter the building to begin the murals. This represented a setback which has become somewhat recurrent in my art-making practice- one in which a domino effect of scheduling errors stems from the corrected assumption that everything will go as planned.
I can become stir crazy without a project, so I hit up a friend of mine, Shane, at World Triumph Martial Arts to propose to him a diptych mural. I drew for two walls, (which were not even finished being constructed). I went to the hardware store and bought supplies to finish construction on the walls. The sun seemed to set early. That night, I went to the library to study for the now four walls which I am to paint.
