for approximately Several Days last week, i sallied forth about the overcast and kinda rainy seattle city administering to That Which One Does When One Is Mostly Self Employed As Performer Of The Art much like any other Several Days save but for one noticeable detail: my hands were bright red.
fortunately, 'twas not due to a You Need To See A Doctor 5 Minutes Ago medical condition. in blessed fact, it did not involve the pain or the harm to anyone or anything, myself included.
and so how does one find themselves with fire engine red extremities? well, in this particular instance, it was a direct result of a combination of not wearing protective nitrile examination gloves and waiting too long to use ACTUAL SOAP to wash my paws off after being tasked repeatedly to hands and knees it to the deck and sop up several gallons worth of RED using an astonishingly absorbent sponge. the RED being neither actual blood nor a corn syrup based liquid representation of vital fluid, but just plain ole water from the mop sink dyed the certain color choice of a certain ALICE GOSTI, whose art performance project i am at her technical beck and call for. the take away on my end of aforementioned duties being that i left theater von theater with palms and phalanges looking like a person who just committed some kind of ritual involving at least one but probably closer to many a sacrificed lamb. needless to say, it was noticeable. fortunately for me, other pronounced visual clues (walking around in broad day light with a retinue of artsy looking folk) and universal safe assumptions (i mean really, who sacrifices lambs these days?)(don't answer that.) meant that i, with my wildly out of place tinting, was read as not just AN ARTIST, but a WORKING ARTIST at that.
never you mind that the presumptions were based off a pedestrian occupational hazard that comes with being a stage lackey, this clandestine outside validation from my fellow humans i will willingly take! (the smattering of jesty crime scene/slaughtered lamb Dad Jokes that tagged along with this misdirected recognition, i could pass on, thank you very much.)
and during those Several Days, while basking in my By Association Artist Aura, it occurred to me Several Times to instaphoto document the task at hand, but, lest i give all the members of my Virtually Assembled Via Some Overly Complicated Algorithm online community a heart attack upon seeing a photo of me covered in RED, i resisted.
instead, i give to you a photo of Cap'n Ron's hand crafting a BUTTER LAMB.
point your dreamy eyes to the upper left corner and you will see fingers slightly red. now imagine if the red were from RED and not poor lighting/extreme color incorrection, and that the lamb crafted was a lamb slaughtered and then you will begin to get an idea of what it would have been like to lay eyes on a photo of what my hands looked like in the moment.
speaking of moments, this one moment now now is a good time for me to preemptively field your question of: did you specifically googleimagesearch 'hand + lamb + art + would be gore'? or did you happen to be on Cap'n Ron's website and worked the blog plot in order to showcase a photo highlighting the how to's of the misunderstood art of butter sculpturing and your fascination thereof?
it's the latter, thank you very much. i love EASTER and it's just around the corner and i'll be damned if i am caught THAT SUNDAY with a bunch of rectangular sticks o' yellow laying out on the table with all those right angles and pointy corners casting harsh shadows and poking holes in my soft focus pastel ambiance. o yes, between the moments of sponging art gore and going about my other artistic ventures, research on the upcoming Big Day is being done. i know of no better way to spend the day/night/wee hours/crack of dawn. well, other than blogging about it, of course.
till then.