Welcome to 1948

The first part of October was spent preparing for the the Donora Smog Commemoration. After disassembling shopping aisles and painting the walls, we turned the Central Drug Store into a makeshift gallery.

I did some word paintings that ended up as either enticing examples of the work inside or prominent window decoration.

Kellen created an indoor campfire from recycled materials and sketchy soldering.

The Freeman utilized some found wood.

Ross did a few pieces with cloth and Iron Oxide. He's also pretty much responsible for the legitimacy of the Smog Commemoration's advertising campaign. His smoke-stack logo is on banners that line the streets in Donora, and is also seen on the sign of the Donora Smog Museum. The Museum is located across the street from the gallery space we hooked up. Whereas our space was an old drugstore, the Smog Museum was formerly occupied by a Chinese Restaurant.

The Weather Channel and some other news station showed up. They covered the museum but not the gallery across the street. Strange event overall. We felt surprisingly good about the whole thing in the end.

Former Disaster Site

This morning, and yesterday morning actually, I traveled to the town of Donora. If you've never heard of Donora, you may have at least heard of the Clean Air Act. In the 1940's the smog produced from the town's zinc plants got so intense that it claimed 18 lives in 3 days. With 50 deaths all together from the polluted air, the government began develop the first Clean Air Act. So here we are in 2008 and there is going to be a Smog Commemoration.

My friend Ross designed a logo for the commemoration, which is printed on banners lining the street. It's also on the sign of the Donoroa Smog Museum; which is a converted chinese restaraunt. But across the street, at the abandoned drugstore is where we come in. We are essentially cleaning the place out for the guy who owns it, and exhibiting an ecologically themed art show. The buzz is that the Weather Channel is showing up.

The Tribune Review was in Donora yesterady interviewing the people at the Smog Museum and taking pictures. Pinkham wanted someone from the university to be there for the photo-op and to talk about our show, however he had class during that time. So I led an expedition of 5 students to Donora, and we spent a few hours dissasembeling the sales racks of the drug store. Sadly the Trib people did not care to hear about the project or even humor us enough to ask for our names.

Today was part 2 of the drugstore cleanup and everyone who made it to class on time made the commute. Everyone worked well together and we probably learned more about being artists in that moldy drugstore than we will in any class.

Other occurences from today:
Eating an MRE for lunch.
2 ten minute power naps in a row.
Painting til the AM.
That's where I'm at.