By the time this posts, I’ll be loose somewhere in Central Park,
where, if the suspicions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are correct,
I’ll be mobbed by journalists from Chad and the Maldives, wanting to
know the terribly interesting story of how I came to be at the center
of the most… something — biggest, important, expensive — art work in the world. Hopefully, my humble reply — that I submitted my name to a website and then answered two emails (which, if I remember correctly, asked me if I could lift a gallon of milk and use an box
wrench) will suffice for the slice-of-life story they seek. But I’m
holding out for the Talk of the Town piece, for which I will claim to
be an art nomad who wanders the world, most recently having camped for a year in a tent near Marfa. So, you know, Ben, call me.
The last training session took place this past Saturday in a small
warehouse in Maspeth, cheek by jowl with the manufacturing plant of
every suspicious pre-baked morning pastry you’ve never purchased at
the bodega (apparently they don’t come with the store fixtures and are actually replaced occassionally). Jeanne-Claude, splendid in Gates’ coloured-hair (on edit: turns out that her real hair color, an error I repeated to just about everyone I know), spent some time trying to convince us that her son is as
important as her husband (hey, you put your mom in front of a hundred
people, what is she going to talk about? You, of course). Christo
spoke for five minutes and dispelled most of the formal reservations I had about the project. This was further aided by the impact of seeing actual pieces, and one fully assembled Gate.
The logistics, the scale, the execution — all of it is an impressive feat. A Gate can be assembled in about fifteen minutes, which is good, since there’s a bunch. And they will be spaced closer than they are tall, which is inconsistent with most of the artwork Christo has created, in which the perspective has deeper than what will result this week. The couple we put up in the yard behind the shed building were not as close together as they will be in the actual work, and there were only six, but even this sliver was quite a sight.
And not that I was expecting some turgid art school studio atmosphere, but I must admit that the palpable sense of joy was refreshing. No one was fussy about handling the materials (though most everyone treated them like they were made of crystal, anyway), and the amount of optimism and trust Christo and Jeanne Claude are investing in the work crews is both practical and nice to experience in a town where most people don’t trust you can make their coffee right.
We got to put one up, see one unfurled, filled out a W-4, were told to be nice to dogs, and that was about it. Mostly a New York crowd, and one understandbly weighted towards those interested in art, it wasn’t the most chummy of environments. Without the usual markers one employs at parties or openings, we weren’t able to self-select into groups of cool kids and losers. Everyone is biding their time, since work crew assignments have yet to be made. But the clutch of Germans who appeared to have traveled here to work the entire project (assembly, monitoring and breakdown) were having a grand old time. I’m assuming all the “Meatballs”-esque small group interaction conventions will develop over the course of the week. It’s not clear if blogging it pre-qualifies me as a loser or a cool kid.
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Gates Day Zero.
By the time this posts, I’ll be loose somewhere in Central Park,
where, if the suspicions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are correct,
I’ll be mobbed by journalists from Chad and the Maldives, wanting to
know the terribly interesting story of how I came to be at the center
of the most… something — biggest, important, expensive — art work in the world. Hopefully, my humble reply — that I submitted my name to a website and then answered two emails (which, if I remember correctly, asked me if I could lift a gallon of milk and use an box
wrench) will suffice for the slice-of-life story they seek. But I’m
holding out for the Talk of the Town piece, for which I will claim to
be an art nomad who wanders the world, most recently having camped for a year in a tent near Marfa. So, you know, Ben, call me.
The last training session took place this past Saturday in a small
warehouse in Maspeth, cheek by jowl with the manufacturing plant of
every suspicious pre-baked morning pastry you’ve never purchased at
the bodega (apparently they don’t come with the store fixtures and are actually replaced occassionally). Jeanne-Claude, splendid in Gates’ coloured-hair (on edit: turns out that her real hair color, an error I repeated to just about everyone I know), spent some time trying to convince us that her son is as
important as her husband (hey, you put your mom in front of a hundred
people, what is she going to talk about? You, of course). Christo
spoke for five minutes and dispelled most of the formal reservations I had about the project. This was further aided by the impact of seeing actual pieces, and one fully assembled Gate.
The logistics, the scale, the execution — all of it is an impressive feat. A Gate can be assembled in about fifteen minutes, which is good, since there’s a bunch. And they will be spaced closer than they are tall, which is inconsistent with most of the artwork Christo has created, in which the perspective has deeper than what will result this week. The couple we put up in the yard behind the shed building were not as close together as they will be in the actual work, and there were only six, but even this sliver was quite a sight.
And not that I was expecting some turgid art school studio atmosphere, but I must admit that the palpable sense of joy was refreshing. No one was fussy about handling the materials (though most everyone treated them like they were made of crystal, anyway), and the amount of optimism and trust Christo and Jeanne Claude are investing in the work crews is both practical and nice to experience in a town where most people don’t trust you can make their coffee right.
We got to put one up, see one unfurled, filled out a W-4, were told to be nice to dogs, and that was about it. Mostly a New York crowd, and one understandbly weighted towards those interested in art, it wasn’t the most chummy of environments. Without the usual markers one employs at parties or openings, we weren’t able to self-select into groups of cool kids and losers. Everyone is biding their time, since work crew assignments have yet to be made. But the clutch of Germans who appeared to have traveled here to work the entire project (assembly, monitoring and breakdown) were having a grand old time. I’m assuming all the “Meatballs”-esque small group interaction conventions will develop over the course of the week. It’s not clear if blogging it pre-qualifies me as a loser or a cool kid.