Vacuum Tube Necklace with Green Ribbon, originally uploaded by exoskeletoncabaret.

Sterling silver wire-wrapped vintage vacuum tube pendant with grass green grosgrain ribbon.

Available at http://www.exoskeletoncabaret.etsy.com, along with a few other new items of note. I’ve been so busy entertaining guests and playing with power tools that I haven’t had much time to update my store, but this will change. I have a pile of prints and a few framed items left over from ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM that need loving homes.

But tea (lavender grey, hot) first (with local cream-top milk…n0m!).
Cheers.

So, now is your final chance to view the installation at Suite 100, and your last opportunity to take a morsel of this presentation with you. Items by any of the 13 participants may be purchased online via the aforementioned website or snatched away in person.

Thanks to everyone who supported this endeavor! Hopefully, this will be just the first of many gallery shows and events of note in Seattle.

For those of you who cannot attend the event or would like to get a head-start on the art action, we’re preselling the show online. I expect most of the items will sell out quickly due to the caliber of artists involved and all the attention the show’s had, so if there’s something you really desire, please grab it up ASAP.

I am incredibly proud of the backbreaking work that the entire artist collective and crew put into this gig. While steampunk’s popularity generally emanates from its captivating and palatable visual aesthetic, I think the true reason why it has appealed to me so relentlessly is because of the meticulous, loving labor involved in creating its artifacts and culture. This has been difficult, and as David’s shadowbox states, “This won’t go on forever”, ‘this’ being a lot of things. But the notion of impermanence, something I feel acutely, clashes with steampunk’s ability to be perpetually outside time. Thus we press on, we work hard, and we hope together for a better future filtered through the triumphs and shortcomings of an altered past.

I could not have managed this endeavor without the assistance and reassurance of the twelve other artists involved, my co-curator Molly Friedrich, and even more so, the folks who stepped up to load in, run errands, produce group meals, and soothe stressful moments out of stalwart friendship alone. This is anarchism at work. An epic thank-you to Willow Bl00 for taking time off of her day job to hang the show, delivering tequila, and being a rock. I owe you one.

Thank you to everyone, and see you at the gallery opening tonight!

City of the Dead, originally uploaded by exoskeletoncabaret.

The adventures continue…
Sunday, we piled 300 lbs. of camera gear, accordions, Utilikilts, and petticoats into Nathan’s and Petra’s cars and drove to/from Portland, Oregon, and then further on to a tiny logging town called Vernonia. The mill there is crumbling and abandoned and was a breathtaking location for a shoot. I owe B. Zedan my right arm and a very large vegan cookie for sourcing it.

This place was like a church–its walls bearing graffitied hymns, its choir loft made of trees. The acoustics of the place were divine–each chord banged out of Magpie’s accordion and Nathan’s violin gently collided with the stone walls of the mill, the fall-off perfect. We’ve vowed to take The Ghosts Project there in October for a recording session.

We managed to avoid ticks and poison oak but misplaced some gear and had a brief run-in with the cops. The area was littered with blackberry bushes (free snacks) and goofy bunnies and ducks. So much cute.

The goal of the trip was for Magpie and I to shoot pictures for ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM. We have very dissimilar photographic styles, so I am anxious to see the respective dynamics captured by each of our cameras in the show.

My set is here. I was pleasantly stunned at the brilliant color saturation of some of these photos. It helps that my friends are all extra-shiny, too.

Let me know in the comments if there’s a photo you’d like printed or you’d suggest for the gallery show.

Thanks!

ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM: ARTIFACTS BY PIONEERS OF AMERICAN STEAMPUNK, originally uploaded by exoskeletoncabaret.

I’m pleased to announce that I am co-curating and presenting artwork as part of a 13-person group gallery show in Seattle. THIS is what I’ve been so busy scheming the last few weeks. Hope you’ll come. It is a great honor to work with so many talented individuals, all renaissance people in their own right.

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Long before the age of the internet, and well before the cold efficiency of the assembly line, existed fantastic and terrible machines, run on hope, sweat, and steam. It was a time in which form and function lived in sin, and everyman was a revolutionary.

We are 13 American artists united by broad geography and narrow aesthetic.

Marrying narrative and nostalgia to design and technology, we imagine the triumphs of the past overriding the failures of the present to create from the ruins and detritus a dazzling future-perfect.

September 12 – October 3, 2008
Opening Reception: September 12 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM

SUITE 100 GALLERY
2222 2nd Ave Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 956.3900