Sunday, April 15, 2007

In Which I do my Own Project


Here's mine:
Q: What were you like as a kid?

A: Very goofy and I often preferred hanging out with adults to kids.
Q: What did you love to do?
A: Listening to my brother's Steve Martin records, blowing bubbles inside the house, playing kickball, drawing and making collages and puppets and paper dolls. In the summer I made a lot of sand castles at Jones Beach and when it snowed in the winter I made a lot of snowmen and went sleigh riding .
Q: How does who you were then, enter into your work now?
A: I still like to take everything I want to work with out and then put it all together how ever I feel like. And then not clean it up. I also don't care too much for following normal procedure . I'm kind of impatient and I just like to learn things my own way. Also, when I'm really immersed in a project, I don't listen if you're talking to me and I'm in it for the long haul.
Q: How do you keep that spirit of enthusiasm working for you now?
A: When I get too uptight and I'm not having fun I just stop until I'm having a good time again. I think about Picasso or Dubuffet and keepin' it real and childlike.
Q: What were your top kooky projects you tried as a wee one?
A. I spent hours making houses of cards and stacks of rocks and lots of temporal type things that didn't last. I liked making paper chains I made a thick ongoing book of "splatter butterflies" in my basement. I'd lay out tons of white paper, and splatter watercolor paint all over them and then fold them in half and they'd turn into butterflies. I got in trouble too because the walls got totally splattered with paint.
I did a lot of papier machĂȘ projects using balloons. The messier the better I think.
Q. Did you love arts and craft books?
A. Uh, totally..I collected them--and science experiment books! My father ordered hobby books from Time-Life books that I LOVED. They were for adults and had lots of 70's style projects in them. I still look at those when I go to their house. I got books out of the library in which the projects were too hard and I couldn't read the words. My mom would help me then. She'd indulge me and take me to this craft supply store and get me felt and pompoms and whatever materials I needed to turn old plastic bottles into boats or shells into mobiles and make clocks out of cups. (That was a hard one). I still like to buy kids craft books for myself and for little kids when I need to buy them presents.

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