Lauren Yeager's been charged with making artwork that is less subtle than her usual work (http://www.laurenyeager.com/)...she's supposed to make something spectacular, in fact. And whatever she makes is supposed to have a life beyond the week she's been allotted to make the piece.
So we met yesterday (Friday 5/7/10) to talk about the ideas she's been working on since the artists and commentators met on Wednesday night. I'd never met her before (I could not make the Wed. meeting because I had to teach my evening CSU class), so there was a lot of catching up to do. Lauren, I was told, doesn't like to talk publicly about her work, but she quickly opened up and told me (and Chris, Nicole, and Marilyn) about her desire to create something that was both spectacular and earnest... something that resonates beyond mere one-liner objecthood.
"Fireworks came to my mind immediately," she told us. Indeed, they are spectacular. Lauren wants to give fireworks out a the opening to a select group of people who will set them off at a given day/time during the run of the show. "Not on the 4th of July," she asserts. She explained that recipients could be screened and that they would either live in the midtown-downtown area, or would commit to finding a roof in that area on the selected day/time in order to set them off.
I asked if the symbolism of fireworks (associated as they most often are with nationalism, American pride, etc.) was at all problematic to her and she asserted that it wasn't. She's embracing the celebratory nature of the fireworks display. "It could be a celebration of the rebirth of the more blighted areas of the city," she suggests, "and a way for people to feel connected to one another."
She wants a fireworks stand at the opening (which will remain through the run of the exhibition), with billboard-like signage (like the Americana-baroque billboards that pepper the urban landscape in June and July, which advertise nearby fireworks distributors). She searched SPACES' backroom for materials, finding plenty of wood, paint, and even a tent (silver on the inside, grey on the outside) for the stand. She claimed her space in the gallery--the wall that faces the entrance at the rear of the front room (impactful, and, I point out, "it's next to the restroom--no one can miss it").
She, Chris, Marilyn, and Nicole discussed the legal ramifications of giving away fireworks, deciding to not worry much about it (to Marilyn's dismay, perhaps). They suggest that she talk to Jeff Chiplis about fireworks and Chiplis and Cindy Long about navigating abandonned buildings.
After about 75 minutes we parted ways. Lauren said she was going shopping for materials.
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