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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Exaggerated Bow

Here is self-referential humor at its finest. The exaggerated bow. It celebrates the world's most famous Kitty' s 35th anniversary. Yes, she was born in 1977. In London (??). Like many children's stories her parents are never mentioned. She does have kindly grandparents though. The first person I knew into hk was a performance artist named Werther Ornot. I was stepping off a bus from Chico where I had given a lecture on equestrian statues. Werther was headed to Berkeley and proceeded to open an hk coin purse and pull out a New Zealand 10 pence. His most famous piece involved creating a series of fake weather maps with non-existant cold fronts. Actually he was better known for his experimental music at Mills College. You know, comedienne Rose Marie is very up on the arts. She funded and owns an installation I did at the Oroville Museum of Contemporary Art. It is called The Floating Cup Garden. A small travertine plaza has a maze drilled into it. The width of these canals, that branch out at right angles, is slightly wider than a tea cup and their depth slightly deeper. In the beginnig the cups full of fragrant, inspirational tea float in an artificial, kidney-shaped pond. A great loon call is heard and a running outboard motor is lowered into the pond. This causes the steaming vessels of hot liquid to disperse into the Floating Cup Garden, each on its way like a drunken boat. A series of travertine pavilions shade the mini- canals. Here poets stand in long gold robes. They are not to move and only IF a cup is stuck in the maze do they gracefully squat, take the cup from the water, stand, drink and declaim an extemporaneous poem. Then Rose Marie declares the best poem and the winning poet takes an exaggerated bow.


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