Farewell, crates! It’s been fun.

We accepted these crates, originally used for high end museum art transport, to use as staging for the custom bikes shown at Reinventing the Wheel San Diego in September ‘08. It was at that point that we voluntarily took on the responsibility to give these crates the longest life possible, circumventing their original path straight to the landfill.

We’re happy to pass them along to some creative folks who have a vision for them at Burning Man, and we’ve asked them to send us photographs so that we can all watch them travel along their way. We hope to give you an update on where they call home in 2009…and 2019!

We’re proud of you MCASD.

A month after bringing Fallen Fruit down from LA, and a week after a sold-out screening of Beautiful Losers (which was apparently a difficult sell to the institution’s higher-ups, but don’t get us started), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego had the wisdom to highlight local artist Wes Bruce’s Evidence of Searching at last night’s TNT. Here’s a photo journal from the install & exhibition.

Wednesday:

Early AM on Broadway on the way to MCA for the install day 1, we saw the man with the coolest suit in town.

Wes eyeballs the gates to the fortress.

Right this way…

A pickup full of 4′x8′ modular walls, designed and built by Sanctuary143’s Jeff Faeth and Wes for his MCA edition of Evidence of Searching.

Some beautiful light in the early morn. Zack was hungover from night golf but charged ahead in full force.

Jeff’s mockup. A-Team style.

Jeff surveys the west wing, about halfway there!

Thursday:

Backstage during TNT. That’s a 10′ wall people!

More backstage… Joel P. West on the iPod.

A room within a room!

While people browsed the installation, others were busy cutting & pasting.

A group Evidence‘ fest ensued.

Friends, family and strangers gathered thoughts side-by-side in deep concentration.

A good time was had by all.

Writer and Joel P. West played sets across the street. Photos are lacking here because I was busy listening.

On the walk to the car… a few peeps were still snippin’ away upstairs.

Thanks for having us Wes!

Photos: Sean Kelley

Oh tin can phone, why do you hold so much knowledge in your metallic ridges?

We assembled many a tin can phone for CONSPIRE, and we chose it to represent the event. CONSPIRE was all about communication – artists and musicians collaborating two to a room – so we drew a parallel there; one person transfers ideas to another, and there’s an exchange based on sound. What’s more, the venue — The Martin Building, a revamped 1920’s hotel turned apartments — is urban and interactive at once like this soup can technology. Residents meet up through gatherings like CONSPIRE, and the building borders the city, equipped with rusty (yet charming) fire escapes and shining wood floors. To us, the tin can phone seemed a perfect fit.

The journey to CONSPIRE was an enlightening one… A note about the tin can phone – it doesn’t work that well. We tried it (some of us for the first time) – we ended up with circles imprinted on our cheeks and laughed more than we heard. But what gave it more meaning was the artist statement from Room #23’s Keikichi Honna. His broken English communicated more than what we were able to initially:

“Tin can phone” may represent communications, or symbolize community for younger generations of i-phone/skype users.  But not for old schoolers like myself.  It’s a fond memory of my childhood.
Funny thing is this needs a partner, which has plenty of incidents of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Funnier still is it needs to keep tension between us for our voices being heard.”

So cheers to communication and miscommunication. May our voices be heard and may we all CONSPIRE to create.

The latest report from the field:
There’s been a Sanctuary143 sighting on a city truck somewhere outside of Los Angeles.

Stay alert.

Sandee Manuel and Keikichi Honna make the journey from Oceanside to Tijuana to check out materials for a sculptural installation in the works for the CONSPIRE event on January 17th:
Today we met the first born of our 20 baby Jesuses – he’s pretty heavy for a newborn, pale and has empty eye sockets but otherwise pretty cute.
I’ve enclosed a few pics on our trek back to The U.S.
We encountered many churro vendors, juggling kids, and men carrying large hand-woven baskets. With every basket seller Keikichi would quietly chime in “Snake Charmer.”
-sandee

The s143 Wheel-Lore continues — facts and folklore about the wheel to wet your appetite for the upcoming Reinventing the Wheel show.
#4: Wikipedia claims the invention of the wheel falls in the late Neolithic/New Stone Age (around 7,000 years ago), along with other technological advances that brought about the Bronze Age. Quite shocking: although paleo-anthropologists now date the emergence of anatomically modern humans to about 150,000 years ago, 143,000 of those years were “wheel-less”! 143,000…Coincidence? We think not.

S143 introduces to you master graffiti hunter Lauren Daniels of Seattle Graffiti. Keep in mind these words of wisdom:

The revolution is for display purposes only.

“Graffiti is not the lowest form of art. Despite having to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually the most honest artform available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on some of the best walls a town has to offer, and nobody is put off by the price of admission…

- Banksy, Wall and Piece 2005

Graffiti can make you smile, break your heart, make you think, or at the very least make you stop to consider your surroundings every once in a while. Public art done by the people for the people is of great value in our society.

-Lauren

…More from s143 artistsTony and Aki’s adventures in Japan!

Aki uses the wheel!

Tony and Aki are invited to Aki’s neice and nephew’s traditional calligraphy class, and Tony learns to write “heart”.

One morning they follow Aki’s dad to an auction/marketplace where he buys food for their grocery store. (We love the very artfully packaged melons!)

We’re reinventing the wheel as we speak… Here’s a peek at Thatcher’s work in progress – BMX with sidecar. It’s an art form. More to come.

Roaming Reinvent artists Tony Greene and Aki Kaneko send a quick update en route to Japan. After hitting up San Diego-LAX-Tokyo Narita-Nagoya and almost 24 hours of traveling, they have arrived. All in the name of wanderlust!

What an epic shot of these two. Congratz on the engagement!