David Eckard: Anxious Murmur

I completed another window drawing and shared /assaulted/teased the Pont-Avenians with my take on a local favorite: fruits de mer (fruits of the sea).

It’s a horrifying, visceral, straight from the “primordial ooze” culinary offering that had to have originated as a bet or a drunken dare. “Jean, I’ll give you five francs to eat whatever I scrape off this underwater rock…”

You’re presented with a huge mound of artfully arranged sea snails, shrimp, mussels, oysters and crab on a bed of seaweed. Next to your platter is a selection of wicked little hooks, pliers, dainty spoons and mallets that are used to liberate the briny, shapeless nuggets. People rip into, stroke, tear, split, suck and devour this “fruit” with an unrestrained, un-French, primal abandon that is embarrassing to witness. I blush and confront my crepe with the same “where do I look?” panic I experience when I see couples making out on the metro or when monkeys masturbate at the zoo.

All things underwater freak me out so to willingly eat what appear to be flawed, biological prototypes or prehistoric remnants pushes a gastronomical button or two.

It’s also really expensive.

To stay true to the character of the region, my platter is offered up by a beefy, tattooed sailor arm…

”Comment dit-on sublimate?”

CLICK TO ENLARGE AND SEE THE DETAILS…

cut out sections lit up at night

voila!

So after a rapid fire trip across the US of A (New York, Minneapolis, Spirit Lake, Minneapolis, Portland), I’m settling back into my little village of Pont-Aven. It was an exhilarating and exhausting kaleidoscope of business, friends and family. I’m glad I got to see a good amount of people and wish I could have seen more. Thanks to those who made my visit(s) so special!

I delicately cradled my new video camera all the way home like a fresh newborn…only to find out that my infant is in fact a yowling, greedy, demanding little bundle. Now I get to play the “chase my own tail” game of support/peripheral upgrade. Of course my old (three years) G4 iBook isn’t fast enough to really take advantage of the high definition abilities of the camera and if I’m to do this right, Final Cut Studio 2 needs to be installed and can I comfortably use the tripod I now have and come on, still wearing jeans? Maybe I should upgrade to trousers or at least slacks. You call that a haircut and what about those socks….

Damn. Can’t I have anything nice?

Hanging out with friends and family who in fact do have new(ish) infants and knowing that a family is not in my future, I realize that the work, the creative explorations and the experiences I can embrace or create for myself are the core components and markers in my life. If I want to up the ante, raise the bar, expand my horizons, exceed my limits and do all sorts of other cliché ridden improvements with my career I need to commit (“You Can’t Spell Commit Without IT”) to a bigger sense of what the work can and needs to be.

Embrace it, flaunt it, work it and like the couple on my plane back to Paris, don’t be overly concerned if my “baby” is disrupting or disturbing anyone else.

So, Apple Store, get ready to approve a payment plan so my lil’ Canon can have a few more siblings in the crib.

Hmmm, I wonder how much a digital au pair is……….? 

So, I think I’m going to buy a Sony HDR-FXI video camera when I’m in NY next week.

Any recommendations, warnings, suggestions about this particular model?

Strange, cryptic messages are unfolding across the studio wall…..

again, for the seventh season, playing old man “Tucker” in Turgid Gables Summer Theater’s production of “A Plowshare for the Admiral”…

“I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

Hmm, difficult prop to make in a birthday month……..

I’ve been generating the drawings/props for my soon to be deployed “illusions” and I have to say it’s a kick. There is something so liberating about whipping out these drawings knowing that they’ll be utilized for something bigger. Low-budget realities aside, charcoal and white-faced cardboard is fantastic.

Here are a couple of wall shots of an assortment of bottles (somebody once said draw what you know…) and a collection of other legerdemain players.

All around me now I’m seeing the prologue…

The next set is complete and it’s time to start gathering up tricks (so to speak). 

I’ve been jotting down illusions and “ta da” moments I want to create and here are a few that are scribbled on my wall:

apple to skull

giant stone/Atlas moment

ectoplasm puppet

rabbit from a bottle

hypnotic spiral

horse balancing on cup

floating brick

bell toll

rapid fire transformations

noose and flower

flowering log/disappearance

water pour/thunder

shadow dance

(if nothing else they’re all good band names…)

I’m excited about taking the diorama beyond just the visual effect/gimmick and actually creating performative actions that can be dependent on the artifice and character of the staged moment. 

Here’s a small test video I shot Sunday to check lighting, framing and spatial illusion. It’s pretty close.