an exercise in the absurd

Yesterday, at our request, we received all our work back from one of the galleries. They had had these 8 pieces for over three years and it was past time to remove them. I'm planning to 're-do' three of them.

I like the pieces OK as is but I really have no where to hang them and I don't want them to just sit in a box on a shelf. They are wall pieces. One I could probably find a place to hang as it's small and not so heavy but already in my mind I have deconstructed and reconstructed it. The other two have two components each and I am separating them and doing some recombining of parts and adding new cast pieces to other parts. Maybe these reincarnations will find a more ready audience and new homes. But I need to work faster or smarter or more hours or something.

I've been meaning to start a new series of models for the botanica erotica but other things get in the way, not the least of which is working on which the images I'm going to use. I've been looking at pictures and working on drawings. I've got 7 so far. Now I need to start making the blank wax blocks.

But once again another whole day slipped by yesterday with the delivery of the 9 very large boxes from the gallery. Having recently had three beautiful works that they sent out by another artist arrive broken to pieces, they seemed have erred on the very far side of caution with ours.

Each piece was wrapped in copious amounts of tissue paper, wrapped in mountains of bubble wrap in a box stuffed with foam in another box stuffed with foam and peanuts. One piece that measures 8” x 6” x 6” arrived in a box 22” x 22” x 22”. And this was not the exception but rather the rule. The biggest box was 22” x 22” x 58”.

Just the boxes alone filled the space between our living room space and the dining room space. Once the unpacking commenced, it spread out and filled the big room where I work as well. 8 artworks inside 18 boxes.

Here's 4 of the returned pieces.

After everything was unpacked, the repacking for storage of all those packing materials began.

Here's the tally:

2 boxes of bubble wrap

6 boxes of mattress foam

1 box of peanuts in bread bags (some of my original packing material)

2 boxes of loose peanuts

1 box of tissue and unprinted newspaper

I even included the measurements of some of the boxes in case you can't tell how fucking big they are.

It was 12 boxes worth of packing material out of the 18. The other six I flattened for recycling. The peanuts will get recycled as well. I'll take them to one of those 'we pack it and ship it for you' places. They're always happy to get free packing material.