failure

outside the abbey theater

durango, co  03.07.10

hank's spring pants

cameron,az 03.17.10

While pasting in Cameron today a young Navajo family of four stopped by.  They were great.  When people stop I never know whether they're going to be supportive or say I can't paste here.  

They were curious about the process.  The woman said she thought I'd drawn the images onto the tank (which made me laugh).  I wish I was that talented.  Her husband said he thought I used some type of silk screen process.  One of their daughters ran around looking at the pictures while wearing a pink hat like she was getting ready for the Easter parade.  She had a kind smile which she shared often.  The man said that he and his family live close by and that  they see all sorts of people stopping to take pictures of the pastings I did a couple weeks ago.  That made me feel good.  I gave him my card.  He said his sister has a bead stand a little bit further up the road and she'd like to have some images pasted to her stand.  He said she'd be happy to know how to get in touch with me now.  

All told, I was disappointed with the pasting of Hank in his spring pants.  For some reason, the image didn't jump off of the red background the way I'd anticipated.  The image of Minnie on the other side of the tank seems more grounded and organic.  It works.  The image of Hank doesn't.  O well.  Live and learn.  It didn't help that I made my paste too thick and it almost dried before I could get the image up.  Maybe I'll like this image better if I see in when it's not in shadow.  Maybe.

And then I returned to the long, maroon billboard near Cameron where I pasted lambs + kids a couple weeks ago.  The image of the lamb and kid had been almost totally removed by the wind, rain and snow.  While scraping down the remains of the image the brother of the owner of the billboard pulled up and said his brother didn't want me to use the board.  I told him that I'd talked with the woman on whose land the billboard rests; however, he didn't want to hear it.  I was bummed that I didn't get to finish pasting a new piece and had to leave a partially scraped piece on the board.  With the exception of the family at the red tank, it was a disappointing day.  I have to remember the little girl's smile.