REDSTARTstudio

We were commissioned by Chabot Space Center to participate in a project titled Green Machine Design Challenge which involved asking kids visiting the Climate Lab exhibition to draw their ideas of helping us to live more sustainably.  We were provided with hundreds of great ideas and had to choose one. That drawing was the “Rainmaker” a design by 8 year old Dylan from Danville. His idea was to build a solar powered machine that would suck up ocean water, remove the salt , turn the water into steam that would seed the clouds (“rainbow clouds”) and create a place for kids to play in the rain. From our studio,  second hand stores, hardware stores, and in the street we found materials to assemble the Rainmaker.

We are calling these “purgative pants” or “entropic pants” or “occu-pants”. Soon, when they are finished, we will don them and perform a purgative together. One pair sounds like the woods, and the other sounds like water.

In August we recorded this birdlist at Ridgeway National Wildlife Refuge in Washington while we were visiting artists at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

We have been working with Susan Schwartz of Friends of Five Creeks and with UC MLA student Johanna Hoffman to come up with an idea for creating a collection system for trash issuing from the culverted mouths of Strawberry and Schoolhouse Creeks in Berkeley. This debris will become part of a functional structure made for relaxing and enjoying the beauty of the site: San Francisco Bay. Strawberry Creek and Schoolhouse Creek empty into San Francisco Bay near Caesar Chavez Park. Much of the debris that travels though these creek systems enters the bay, and perhaps ultimately into the Pacific Trash Vortex.  We would like to create a process-structure for removing and  examining the debris that travels though the creek system.

Strawberry Creek reconnaissance:

Schoolhouse Creek reconnaissance:

Yesterday we participated in this year’s Bouquets to Art event at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Along with Holly Selvig we made an arrangement that was inspired by a rubbing made by Merle Green Robertson from the ballcourt at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Pennisula. Holly and Lauri did the arranging while I photographed. Greens for the piece came from Blake Garden and Holly picked up some red lilies and roses at the SF Flower Market. Our statement of intention was as follows:

Our floral piece is inspired by the materiality of the event represented in the “Rubbing from the Ball court”.  The stylized nature of the stone carving tempers the extreme drama of the event: the beheading of the loser of the ball game.  We tried to capture that drama in color,  form, and material, and at the same time, also honor the brutal cultural tradition.

Recently I made some hand hewed monkey bars for Eve. She’s 4, and they are just her size. Last week my nephew Neil was visiting from Maine, and he gave them a try.