...strip the ink-soaked dress off of Theresa (without messing up the natural ink-splatters on the dress), hang the dress up on the hanger, then carry Theresa backstage. The goal was to do this as quickly as possible minimizing the amount of the time from the lights going out, to them coming back up to reveal only the paint-spattered paper, and hanging dress and an empty chair.
Backstage after the performance had finished! The piece was totally wild. It started with Theresa in a white-dress and lovely make-up. Her hair was pinned-up in an elaborate "beauty pageant-style" hair-do that concealed a bunch of large ink-filled balloons!
Grant and I emerged from backstage, carrying Theresa in a chair and set her down on a large sheet of paper in front of the audience. After we cleared away, a photographer approached Theresa and started taking a series of close-up portraits of her like they doing a fashion-shoot. She made uncomfortable smiles and posed for his camera. A minute or two into the "shoot," she acted like she was playing with her hair, but she was secretly popping the ink-filled balloons! As she popped each balloon, a gush of jet blank ink seemed to appear from nowhere and would stream over her face and onto the white dress.
The performance ended with the the lights suddenly turning off. Now came the part that we'd spent hours rehearsing! Grant and I had to go out in the darkness...
Here's Grant and I backstage with Theresa, about to lift her up in a chair and carry her out to the awaiting crowd for her performance piece "CLOTHED".
Someone puts up these flyers in my neighborhood. They are always worth deciphering:
"If you love someone kill your cell phone and pick up a sketch notebook or Scotch on the rocks. Save your eyesite make friends not enemies. Save wild life. Throw a party in the human jungle."
Close up of the condemned, in chains, being led to hell. I like how there's a devil at both the front, and end of the line. The guy in the back is so excited to shepherd everyone to hell. He's like the worst camp counselor of all time.
"It represents the Last Judgement as described in the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
On the lower lintel, the dead are being resuscitated from their tombs. Just above that, on the upper lintel, the archangel Michael is weighing their souls according to the lives they led on earth and the love they showed to God and to men. The chosen people are led to the left towards Heaven (to Christ’s right) and the condemned are lead to the right, to hell, by a devil."
Crazy mural when you enter. "The mural, designed by Ecko, puts visitors on the red carpet being photographed by paparazzi as they enter the front door." (source)
I first saw Alex's art when I came into NYC during my high school years when I somehow ended up wandering into the Psychedelic Solution Gallery in the early 90s. The documentary features a ton of his mindblowing art.
