Monday, December 25, 2006

Stellar Axis = Boondoggle!





Boy, has this been a great season for getting to hang with the Artists & Writers grantees for this Antartic cubicle dweller. These photos are of the Stellar Axis Project by Lita Albuquerque, a conceptual artist who has a detailed and interesting narrative on this project that I won't even attempt to relate here - aside from all the geek speak, it is just plain cool as hell to look at! Especially in the white out condition where I found myself during my official "boondoggle" to get out of the office. I worked with a team of 5 others anchoring the 55 small balls into the snow. The spheres are in the pattern of stars of the southern sky, so their placement is not random. I cannot beleive how much fun I had doing this - mostly because I got to work with Simon, the scientist on the project, who is not afflicted with the coating of 4 months of labor camp crankiness that has descended on me & other townies. The other reason it was so much fun is because I love this weather....give me white out, blowing snow sideways, near blizzard conditions and I my spirts really soar. So many people whine & cry when the weather is like this & want it to be oppressively sunny all the time, and I don't get it. I am in such a minority with this that I get to go do cool stuff like this in this weather because no one else wants to. To me, it is so much more surreal & otherworldly to see these blue spheres this way...like they are posed in front of a swanky cyclorama - no horizon - no sky - just a void of empty stillness. Snow started collecting in little blobs on the sides of the spheres, and it looked like they were wearing little tortured mouths...they had personality that changed with the weather. We bonded. It was magnificent. I was only out for a few hours but my spirits were so lifted after being out in the cold & working on a project that I begged to be part of the takedown crew. At around 5:30 Will came by in his truck & gave me a quicker ride back to town (after posing with me with "Sirius", the biggest sphere) as we'd gone out in the Pisten Bully. All in all, a grand afternoon!

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