the begishies

mae begishie at gray mountain

jim begishie in cameron

Incredible fucking day.   I awoke at 4:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  i'd been jonsing to get work up on the tanks at gray mountain after prepping the shit out of them a week ago. But yesterday and Saturday we had gale force winds up to 50 miles an hour wreaking all sorts of havoc here.  in fact, we were without power for about 5 hours yesterday.  so there i was in the kitchen at 5 a.m. this morning making wheat paste.

anyway, i got to the tanks before the wind reached full velocity.  fortunately it didn't get as bad as it was the previous 2 days.  however, it gusted enough to blow my ladder over a couple times (without me on it).  i've just got to say it and toot my own horn; it takes skill to get big sheets of paper onto a curvilinear surface 12 feet off the ground on a windy day.  that's all i'm saying.

regardless, it was yet another beautiful day in northern arizona.  exhausted + thankful, i head to bed with hopes of hitting it again tomorrow.

pizza furiosa

a

  

step - my first and best assistant, friend ever!  she was with yote + me when we first pasted as a crew in october 2009 at:

i.    black mesa junction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS7KhSdz3Mk), 

ii.   bitter springs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRltQIMJ70Q) 

iii.  gray mountain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4CkiEGp3M)

love ya girl!  xo

spike haired woman in a city of thieves

i always thought that was one of my best titles.  it came from the 1992 - 93 bike expedition i did with 4 other guys from the top of africa to the bottom.  (africatrek bicycle journey through africa  i don't get any money from that.)  when we cycled through central african republic, the "africa on a shoe string/lonely planet" guide book described bangui, the capital of c.a.r., as "...a city of thieves."  i saw this woman as we were cycling out of the country and she became for me "spike haired woman in a city of thieves."  i still love her hair.

spike haired woman in a city of thieves

bangui, central african republic (03.93)

even though "la auberge" where we stayed with peace corps volunteers had razor wire around the top of a fence with broken glass bottles embedded in the cement at the top of the wall, a dog and a sentinel with a bow and arrow (an older man who frequently slept through the night), our tents still got robbed.  granted, it was raining cats and dogs during the night when the robbery occured.  i lost my cycling shoes which i'd left outside our tent and ended up buying a funky pair of yellow, canvas/plasticky, high top tennis shoes made in china.   in retrospect, maybe the robbery was a blessing.

anyway, i spent all day saturday and sunday last weekend prepping the tanks at gray mountain.  i thought i'd prep the tanks, paint them and get my piece up on saturday.  i didn't get as far as i thought after working 5 and 1/2 hours.  i drove the 75 minutes back to gray mountain sunday thinking i'd finish scrapping 2 years of paper and paint off of the tanks, paint them and get my piece up.  after working 6 hours i still didn't get up!  

gray mountain in blue

i did get up in flagstaff on saturday however.  all was not lost...

peace.

the moment the idea struck...

a friend in flagstaff will be opening a new restaurant soon called pizza furioso.  he gave me an opportunity to do an installation which i 'm working on now.  i sent him the mock up, he dug it and boom, i'm getting it together.


the piece will be interesting for me in a couple different ways.  it'll be the first installation i've done that evolved out of doing a mock up of superimposing two photos to see how they might work together.  it has the potential to be a strong piece and that excites me.  


while i was cutting the gulls out, i noticed the stencil pattern that remained in the paper on the floor and thought it'd be cool to capture that and figured out a way to do that i've not seen used before.  (actually, i take that back.  faux reel uses this technique.)  regardless, i'm excited to see where this will go.  i just wanted to document when and how this idea came to me with this entry.


meanwhile, i've got mad love for these folks doing the tenderloin national forest project.  they started doing this the same year i started working on the rez in 1987.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02TIDKBztgw

peace.