I have enjoyed our weak ties together

Comments:

I’d like to start with Emma’s project, the paint-by-numbers for modern art, which can be found on her blog. Paint-by-numbers kits, often sold in craft stores, allow the hobbyist/enthusiast to recreate paintings they know – and trust – as art. A DIY Mona Lisa. A connect-the-dots Starry Night. The choices Emma made – Stella, Lichenstein, Mondrian – work very well for the medium of paint-by-numbers. Lots of hard outlines, solid blocks of color. It would be difficult to paint a Jackson Pollock by numbers. But then again, there’s already a program for that.

The paint-by-numbers piece that intrigues me the most is the Barnett Newman, with instructions 1 Red, 2 Black. Perhaps because of the simplicity of the two colors, this piece more than the others resembles a work of conceptual art. The instructions are more ambiguous. My first interpretation of “1 Red, 2 Black,” was not to fill in the spaces marked “1″ red, and those marked “2″ black. It was to paint one space red, and two spaces black. It was a Sol LeWitt moment.

I’m interested in how this project can be pushed further. It’d be cool if Rudy Giuliani were walking around in Michael’s or Hobby Lobby and came upon a Chris Ofili’s Virgin Mary. Because, you know, if Giuliani could do it, it’s not art. How ’bout it, Emma? Are you into shopdropping?

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I’ve often wished I were a smoker. So many things about it are just so cool. The crisp little boxes, the neat rows of cigarettes packed in together, not loose, not too tight. Smokers always have lighters, which is really convenient for going to concerts, or putting on eyeliner. In cities where people are still allowed to smoke indoors, bars are alight with people cooly pulling out their Parliaments. Can I bum one? Sure, why not. I’m Curt, what’s your name? Smokers make easy conversation with strangers, and instead of awkward silences they can just take a drag.

Fortunately for non-smokers like me, Curt and his crew at The Awkward Alligator have invented a pack that I can indulge in without feeling pains of my wallet or lungs. If I open up a pack of Awkward Alligators, instead of finding cigarettes I would find a delightful substitute of poems and drawings. This traveling collective of litmag material is a really nice object, so nice that instead of passing it along I might just want to hold onto it for myself. In fact, I’d like to subscribe to it – a pack a month? These packs are like mini versions of the box zines that I’ve heard about. I’d like to see them at Quimby’s and would happily pay $3.25 for one – the price of a pack of cigarettes.

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I’d like to end with comments on Julie’s submission to the public radio contest. I was particularly fond of this project because I listen to Fresh Air and This American Life everyday, and it was nice to hear Julie’s voice take on those soothing public radio intonations. For me and (from the look of all the comments) for other listeners, the story made me sympathetic to Julie’s experience, from growing up around Southern hospitality to exchanging a knowing glance with a stranger on the Metra.

The project embodies the idea of participation not only in the format, but also in the content of the story she tells. Julie opens with the scene of a big southern picnic, the kind that she’s used to, with “lots of food, lots of people, and lots of conversation.” It moves on to her quiet routine of riding the train with strangers, who normally abstain from making eye contact or conversation with one another. In some ways the story is about the loss of a tradition of socializing with people in public spaces.