I dragged Eric, Pete and Mela to this screenprinting party thrown by a new arts group called s/art/q a few Friday nights ago.
Visitors brought an item to be screenprinted, picked the design, and donated $5 to have their item printed by the artist.
The event was so succesful they were asking anyone who could wait and pick up their item the next day to do so.
We intended to stop by the next morning on our way to the airport to talk to the organizers, but we didn’t end up doing so. I regret not doing so, particularly since we got to Tampa and our flight was delayed by several hours so there was no need to rush.
In the 80s, Sarasota had a profound art dichotomy. There was all this energy at the Ringling College of Art and Design, but it stayed pretty contained. Their were plenty of fine art collectors with amazing collections, but the art scene in general was pretty pedestrian.
In high school we’d all been under the influence of the Ptoli Ptoli Art Society and thought nothing of wearing suits of sod or covering an entire school building in brown paper Publix bags in the name of art. This gave us a false sense of….(I just checked in on Van Choojitarom’s blog and 2 hours of my life disappeared in a swoosh while I was reading…I now have no idea where this post was going)… something something something, I wish s/art/q well and excitedly look forward to following their art adventures from afar.
Dude. I have got to post about Van. Tomorrow. Not today. I need to take my brain outside now. I may just need to lay in my yard for a while and talk to the cicadas.
No, I still haven’t read Stephen King’s Duma Key, a novel involving art galleries and Sarasota, despite the fact that it’s been sitting here since it came out. Perhaps AOM brings enough art-horror into my life without King contributing to my nightmares.*
*That was a joke. Mostly.
I had never considered myself to be “under the influence” of the Ptoli Ptoli Art Association and having said that can not think of an occasion where any such piece of art work was ever planned. It simply happened and yet the complexity of the creations, in retrospect, would suggest that there was clearly a mastermind orchestrating an outcome and I, (and I assume others) was lured to an unseen canvas to contribute to a vision that was not my own. For being labeled gifted you would have thought I could have foreseen the consequences of my proximity to the performance art involving a “Spam Smash”.
Significant of nothing – my great grandfather James Woodruff taught at the Ringling School back in the 30’s.
Ptoli Ptoli – I never attended any meetings, if there were any, but I always loved the name. My father still remembers the group, too.
I still can’t believe that that is Peter C. I still remember a cute little kid with great curly hair.