Monday, June 02, 2008







Well add that all to the section of the bio to do with Artists & Models involvement. As I looked over the images made by YT that evening (those kept and not sold for cash money to bennie Hallwalls), I pondered the event's 21 incarnations - different venues, changing cast of characters, sense of cohesion, dancefloors, and other stand-out mems.

One that popped into foremind was the third A&M, at Great Arrow Building on Great Arrow and Elmwood, how there was a corridor lined with living Rodin sculptures, buff men up on pedestals, their bodies painted what else ... buh-ronze.
Or the one on Main Street when Pahts and I were a living Calvin Klein ad and YT had the buzziest and shortest 'do ever for the occasion.

Onwards to now. Or then, the near then, of Saturday evening.
This inception of YT's interactive Polaroid booth was prop-happy, and props were shopped for for weeks. Office art, just the right sort of name badges were critical for the nursing staff, bathrobes, and the usual signage and Polaroid-related goods.

Gave the nursing staff their tequila-related names: Nurse Mezcal (SherryB), Nurse Sauza (Jana), Nurse Cuervo (Annie), Nurse Lime (Mish), Nurse Proof (JenM), and Nurse Worm (YT). We were a bitchin', saucy, nurturing staff prone to feeling scalps as we consulted our phrenology charts, shouts of RELAX, and our Nurse Sauza capping off most nursely statements with a shriek of Stat. YT had one straightjacketed patient spit out his gum into a gloved hand. Give me that gum, YT ordered. Are you joking, the strapped-down man asked. You cannot go into SURGERY with gum, yelled Nurse Cuervo, and out the gum came.

The Ward was busy all the livelong night, solidly from half an hour after start time until 1 a.m. - when it was time to call it a wrap and get most of the props and items hoisted onto my gurney and rolled out to the nearby vehicle.

Had a break only when ValT insisted that YT see her installation across the way, a couple of rooms that focused on mania, and depression. The next day, as YT cleaned up the remaining residue (the soothing framed office art and a few other items), observed that Nurse Sauza's shoes that were left behind were completely missing, and what else remained was a tiny plastic shot glass, a Little Mermaid crayon (from my Ward's artist and crafts table where patients were led and robed so that they could make happy pictures on their Polaroid folders), and the two small pots of faux fleurs.

What the above images are, top to bottom:
1. Nurse Sauza doing intake.
2. One of the Ward's phrenology charts. Know phrenology. Love phrenology.
3. The staff - (l. to r.) Nurse Proof, Nurse Lime, Nurse Worm, Nurse Cuervo, and Nurse Sauza. Nurse Mezcal was out triaging.
4. Nurse Mezcal, with patient Scott V. NB: Mezcal's neat sutures.
5. Staffers working on Steve Kurtz, media artiste Paul Vanouse assisting, between Sauza and Mezcal.

Recall: Kurtz's exhibition SEIZED opens at Oilwells this Saturday, 8-11.
YT will be there, with cam and a few bells on.

Wards teeming with safe, happy Love.