2 July 2009

slapdash dandies

Since no one will be here on Saturday, Wednesday the 1st is our Independence Celebration, and the School and Community Parade that goes with it. We’ve been talking about this in class since last week, but no one has really come up with a Big Idea we’d all be willing to do. We had talked about vehicles and giant rolling cameras and things. (Two years ago our class had a huge view camera, like some sort of Chinese Dragon that we carried and marched with…) But I really didn’t want to have to be in anything or drive anything or carry anything heavy again. I just wanted to enjoy it. I had suggested we make big pinhole cameras that could sit on our heads like hats, or be carried around as if we were extra-ridiculous tourists. That was enough to get us all going. As long as it was somehow photo-related and made out of cardboard and found scraps, we were good…

Unlike some of the other classes, however, we didn’t even start until the morning of the Parade, and I could detect a distinct lack of enthusiasm (on my part as well!) We’d already been having so much fun and doing so much work, I think we just wanted to keep our own pace. I knew, however, that all it would take was someone starting to have fun with it and we’d be ok, so I made a quick box hat that looked sufficiently absurd and could be easily made into a “camera” of sorts. Coincidentally, it fit on Laura’s head too (Laura showing clear signs of ambivalence about it all) so soon she was on her way to a hilarious Fancy Camera with Removable Flash.

Of course I decided I had to do something particularly complex and make a large bellows camera. I spent much of the morning researching how to do it online, never having made my own camera before, but I ended up procrastinating for hours since I just wasn’t in the mood for much math or complexity. Meanwhile, Jim was over at his table constructing the perfectly precise angular bellows, teasing me a bit as he worked. After lunch I figured I needed to do it my way – easier, sloppier and perfect for a parade. I found a quicker method online and proceeded to hack and fold and fake my way to an awesome camera, in the process realizing that while I seem good at making things look old, in truth I’m just good at getting things dirty…

The enthusiasm sure kicked in before dinner, and we made a huge mess in and around the studio. We had Fancy Hats, a Polaroid costume, a film box and all manner of insane randomness. Steve found himself duly inspired by Time of the Gypsies and made himself a crazy stack of boxes to run around in. Leah made an awesome cardboard drum, and Beth wore her Soft Sculpture Pinhole and played the clarinet. We traded jackets – she wore my red band blazer with the bird and musical note (which I think I wore for the Parade two years ago) and I wore this amazing long band coat she had just found in Jupiter. My camera was almost a squeezebox but became an insane hat. When we assembled after dinner, we looked like the hilarious Slapdash Dandies that we are – some even with moustaches.

The Parade started at 7:30, leading far around the little valley to the Pines dining hall and the hill across the Llama Knoll, on which they were preparing the fireworks. People from all over the community had been arriving steadily to watch. The Parade must have been quite a sight, as I’m sure it always is with a bunch of artists and craftspeople putting their efforts (well, some of their efforts) to the spectacle. All the other groups and classes looked just as silly as we did, dressed up and dancing all the way. My favorite was Ila’s clay class, who had made a huge puppet of the school’s founder, Lucy Morgan. (There were a lot of Lucies around…) But as we rounded the bend we pulled out our secret weapon – Jim had used a pole and garbage-can lid to make an old Magnesium Flash (actually using Aluminum Powder instead) that we popped off once during the march and again in front of the judges. With Jim’s efforts we managed to win the Most Extravagantly Frou-Frou award, one of the four or five bizarre trophies handcrafted in the studios…. Damn I was proud.

We spent the rest of the evening lying on the hill, eating ice cream and drinking Fancy Beers (or Fancier things like Pernod and Chartreuse, of course…) The fireworks were both homegrown and spectacular, exploding directly against the moon and clouds. I watched the heavy sky and started to think about going home. It’s been way too much of a fantasy life here, but I’m more determined than ever to let the rest of my life – that old tough one with bills and battles – to match it as much as it can.

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