Welcome arrivals

 

Henrique's art has finally arrived from Brazil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And was it ever an adventure.  After weeks of bureaucratic hassles, the truck pulled up on Independence Avenue and --- drum roll please --- did not fit into the loading dock shared by The National Museum of African Art and the Freer Museum and Sackler Gallery of Asian Art!  It was too tall.  So, the museum's noble staff unloaded the crates there on the street in the 20-something degree weather.  The enormous crates were wheeled down the driveway, through the loading dock, to the doors of the museum, through which.... they were to big too fit.  In the end, one of the crates for Henrique's impressive new artwork, Xilonoma Chamusquius, had to be unpacked in the loading dock and then very carefully wheeled across the museum to the gallery where it now resides awaiting installation.  Henrique has taken just a bit of ribbing about why he couldn't have made work that was just a few inches smaller.

Did we mention they were heavy?

 

safely in the loading dock

K-9 Inspection team arrives to make sure there is nothing nefarious in the crates....

Back in the gallery, the crate containing Henrique's tapumes is repurposed as a bath tub to soak long strips of wood, though the staff are all vying to get a turn soaking out their own aching muscles

The other incredibly weldome arrival: Sandile!  He made it safe and sound from Johannesburg and came straight to the museum to see the excitement and catch up with Henrique.  We gave him sunday off to recover, but as of today we are starting to videotape him, as well, so stay tuned to hear him in his own words tomorrow!

January 24, 2011

Here's an updated panorama of the piece. 

January 24, 2011 -- Welcome Sandile Zulu!

Welcome to Sandile's first post. We look forward to hearing more from this fascinating man.

January 23, 2011

Time to add the skin! Now that the basic structure is finished it's tine to line the outside of the piece with individual strips of treated wood. 

Turtle washing

For those of you near and far wondering what it's really like in a museum, here is a photo of some behind the scenes glamor:

We've had a week with some tensions.  While it's great fun to work with Henrique -- he really is as nice as he seems in the videos -- we've been waiting anxiously for his other artworks and materials to arrive from Brazil.  The trademark feature of Henrique's sculptural installations is his use of tapumes, weathered wood used as fencing material across his home town, Sao Paulo.  So, Henrique and his team of helpers finished the understructure for his towering, tangled "Bololo" but then we couldn't move forward because he didn't have the Brazilian wood he needed to proceed.  So, yesterday he took a break.  Today, he returns to experiment with stains and pigments before the shipment arrives tomorrow.  Once it arrives, we will have roughly 500 pounds of old, splintery, fungus-adorned Brazilian scrapwood that Henrique will paint, soak, peel into strips and use to coat his sculpture in brushstroke-like patches of wood.  Here's where the turtle comes in.  we didn't have anything big enough to soak the wood in to make it pliable for wrapping around the sculpture.  So, I snagged my kids' big plastic turtle sandbox.  It took some negotiating, but my four year old agreed to share.  I drove the turtle into the museum's loading dock and as I lifted the turtle out of the car, realized how filthy it was.  What you are seeing is the illustrious Steve Mellor, Chief Conservator and Associate Director for Collections and Facilities, washing the turtle while I laughed and took pictures.  The no longer dirty turtle has now taken up its new home in the gallery.

The other good news is that Sandile is at the airport in Johannesburg and should be arriving tomorrow.  Although Sandile created all of the artworks that will be on view specifically for this exhibition and in response to Henrique's work, he made them in South Africa.  As you can see from the photo below, his chosen medium of fire poses some risks.  Since we couldn't get permission for him to burn here in the museum, he made the works and shipped them ahead.  We installed the thrid of his "paintings," "Large Colon(y) Brownprint" yesterday.  Today, we start rubbing the object labels on to the wall.  Once Sandile comes into the museum, he can install the fourth work of art, a floor sculpture called "Spinal Diagnosis - a regenerate case no.2" and begin to meet with regional art students, radio and press.

January 19, 2011

Todays installment shows the piece finished structurally. Now, Henrique will decide how and what to cover it with and the piece will be finished.

I got to try!

Well, Henrique has succeeded in tearing down the "root" that wrapped its way around one of the support columns in the colum.  It's been replace by a new coil that droops lower, and I agree, looks better.  Best of all -- I got to have a turn drilling some of the support wood into place.  So, I earned my first splinter and gained a new appreciation for how the wood is placed to create this understructure.

In addition, we are positioning the "paintings" by Sandile Zulu.  I use the quotation marks because he works with fire, not paint.  Tomorrow, we are considering moving "Old Bones, Old Genes" 6 inches to the left.  We want to position a third work, "Large Colon(y) Brownprint" first to have a better visual of the overall harmony.  Sandile will be checking the blog, too, so that he can let us know what he thinks of the placement.