big ass water bottle moving day

With brooke’s help yesterday i moved the big ass water bottle and water bottle display case to the navy yard for Kulture klash this weekend.
the shirt i’m wearing is a little something i made to celebrate the completion of big ass water bottle, i figured a piece this long in the works deserves it’s own t-shirt
it was kind of sunny and bright especially reflected off of the bright white enamel.

it was really interesting how the light comes through the piece from one side making it seem transparent, but when viewed from the other side with direct light becomes a solid object again.

a little water bottle love in the family.

it was funny, i had this t-shirt on last night when i was at an event and i found myself at some point actually drinkning out of a water bottle. Later on a dude looked over at me and looked at the t-rshirt and looked back at me drinking the water bottle and kind of laughed(i think he got it). Maybe i should make t-shirts of all the objects i am likely to hold in my hand throughout the day and just wear them around town with a straight face and see if anyone notices.

So big ass water bottle has had quite a journey. In the summer of 2007 I paid a visit to the college of charleston sculpture studio where erik johnson had two crates of steel spikes that someone had given him, He didn’t want them so of course seeing thousands of something metal i said,
I’ll take that if you dont need it.
The boxes of spikes sat around the studio for a couple of months before i ran them through an acid bath and began using them for a new series of rust prints. At some point I started welding them together to make a basket style sculpture. Then I got busy with residencies and installations, but in Decemeber of 2007 I took the piece and the spikes with me for my residency at the Vermont Studio Center. While at the vsc I kept working systematically on the piece until it began to take shape. I actually kept the same water bottle i was drinking out of in vermont and brought it back to the studio and used it as a guide for  the piece. So recently i began cleaning up the finished the piece. Initially i began grinding down the surface to create a shiny metal bottle, but something about the experience of the whiteness of the snow in vermont still resonates with this piece. The mood of this piece always makes me think of my time in vermont.So it only seemed logical, visually and conceptually to paint it white. Throughout this year as i continued to work on “big-ass water bottle” i constantly thought back to my time in vermont. I was pleasantly surprised when i finally stepped back and looked at this piece and saw what i was going for, a synthesis of process and pop. I am very satisfied that the piece is created through the repition of a simple gesture of labor, but the image is one of yet another portable consumer fetish object. I keep thinking that I could sum up the current influences on my studio practice by placing my drink order at a restaurant
coffee and a water please
I also made a series of 100 cast painted water bottles to go in a display case. although I cant remember I think i actually found the display case after i started casting the water bottles, but it was only a matter of time before the two met.
here is the display case in the studio, when i go back on friday to finish the kulture klash install i will snap some pictures of this one in it’s current location, hopefully i can get the lights working on site…