Pictures from my show last saturday here in Prague

I showed a bunch of pictures and writing last saturday here in Prague. man was I nervous I wanted to bail. but it was a good experience. I wanna describe the whole thing and show some pictures for anyone who may have wanted to see but couldn't be there.

Ok so basically the whole thing was to show some writing in a way other than by putting it up on this blog or in e-books. I wanted/want to do something with writing that makes it more tangible. So I worked on some pieces of writing about different things and wrote them on large boards and put the boards on easels to show that way.

Right off the bat, saturday was sort of a mess. wind was blowing knocking stuff over. Two of the boards were thin so the wind got caught behind them and blew them over. marshall was terrified, tail between his legs the whole time. So I had to lay two of the pieces on the ground rather than pick them up every five minutes. I could only really keep two of the easels upright. I had a chair there with a few copies of info about where the paintings and stuff came from and saying welcome. I wanted to have something saying welcome. I never understood why painters never write anything in their own voice to the people who come. At least where you're from, what you're doing, maybe some background. It took me more than a minute to throw that info together, so why not show that here...

It's funny. Writing about it now feels like I'm walking through pointing out the things I want you to see. It's completely different than if you were just looking at the pictures on their own on saturday, but whatever. maybe this is actually better. It's way more comfortable doing this than standing out there was. for sure. I don't know about the name materurbium. I haven't tried searching my name, but I don't think you reach the blog. If you search materurbium you end up here though.

Here are some of the pictures from the event.

This one is about Karel Rachunek, a Czech hockey player who died last November in a horrible plane crash. It's a tribute sort of. A few people asked about this picture. They were Czech and they recognized the name. That was cool. This picture is tactile, so you can touch the letters (which I hoped people would do). The style of putting something together that's tactile with writing I think comes from when I had a poetry teacher in college who told us if you write about something, describe as many of the sensations as you can. I don't remember her name but I remember getting sort of stuck on that idea. When I go see art somewhere I'm never sure if I'm allowed to reach out and touch the stuff I see. Anyway the text of this one goes like this "Rachunek thank you for scoring that goal against Sweden in 2010 with 8 seconds to go. We were watching on the big screen at Spirit Bar. Everybody went nuts. You're gone now. You were killed in a plane crash. But that goal that night...". And there's a sort of faded "I want to remember that night forever. Goodbye." towards the bottom if you look closely.

Another...

This one really has two parts. Straight up and down there's writing on the top and a picture on the bottom. The writing goes like this "Ovid said only god is form. There are no 3 clues. God is simple white patch in front of numbers before + after. So there's no symbol of age." The picture on the bottom doesn't look like much of a picture like this, but it is. It's just meant to be seen on its side, this way...

It's a picture of a person to the right in front of a desk in a room with a giant window in it. The desk has writing on it that says "hearing god is from form too". The writing about Ovid is inspired by this Ovid quote I read in Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Next picture.

The text of this one is a bit more personal. It's just a comment I guess. The words go like this "There isn't only one way. There's what works for me. It can't be for everybody. I'm in one place and they are in another. In some ways, they're right and I'm wrong. "You know the truth when you hear it," says mom. But I don't know if that's true. I change my mind all the time. There has to be love. But even that's sometimes...Sometimes I don't want to love the face of a closed down person. I want to just walk away." Just a comment really. 'They' is no one in particular. It's anyone who believes something different than I do.

and one more...

This is a more poetic one. More along the lines of the Ovid one I mentioned before and the types of lines you catch in ancient poetry. I like that language sometimes. Some of the letters broke off in transport, so I gotta glue those back on. I started writing this little piece of writing when I was in Nepal, sitting on the edge of a staggered rice field watching a yak munch on some grass. I loved the animals there. It was so interesting to see cows and yaks and goats wandering around. The text goes like this "Let me write the way the yak eats, burred in summer by the gold, seeing just what's right in front, turned by sounds. No friend of nature. Nature." Burred is not a word. But burred like bur is what I mean.

There were a few more pictures in the show, but some of them have a hard edge I'm not ready to show on the blog here right yet. I'm trying to let stuff write itself, but sometimes the results are sort of harsh and the language less than sweet. I'm not sure what to do with that. I want the language to be straight, but it's gotta work for me too. The impulse is to not care and just to go. Why not go since I'm only really talking to myself on this blog anyway. But I'll keep it just to these few pieces from the show for now.

honestly not too many people came by on saturday. I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I put together what I could. I was glad if anybody came by and looked. Some people actually did. There was a friendly taxi driver who asked what I had written about Rachunek. There was a drunk guy who wanted to know why in the world I was writing in English (point taken). A bunch of tourists. A few people read a piece or two, looked at me, looked back at the board. That was cool. I sort of got the feeling later that the writing on the boards might be coming off like protest placards of some kind. I really hadn't done enough to explain what I was doing there and what people were looking at. I thought people would read one piece then move on to the next. most people read a little and left. I expected people to read more and ask me something. that's what I do when I see stuff on the street. but pavla said that's not the czech way. she said I should have had more information up on boards the way I had my writing.

for some weird reason even though basically no one read very much I actually feel like things went okay. i didn't have any expectations really. i wanted to finish a bunch of stuff by then and I did. so I was happy about that. honestly, really proud of all of it. I put a lot of time into giving all that stuff a bunch of layers. It was sort of funny watching how people take stuff in. funny how I'm sitting there and pavla and marsh are there and we're standing in the middle of a square. it was funny. the most uncomfortable thing in the world though.

Later y'all.