TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

12:38 AM
Posted by jodi rose

Delaware County, USA
It's been a busy week, helped out at the storefront wednesday, drove upstate friday, ran the farmstand at the pakatakan farmers market saturday, drove around the countryside yesterday, from collecting a locust tree in a run-down complex of church buildings in prattsville - where I started my collection of kitsch americana postcards, some great ones from 1907 and the 1940's, one simply says "how are things with you?" on the back of 'the deer are plentiful round here' - to geoff's metalwork shop down past roxbury, then out to fleischmanns for tovey to buy a couple of old-timer stone wheel blade sharpeners.(and more postcards for me) Set one up on the porch this morning, for freddie to work at when he stops by to talk crap and supervise - everyone needs a task! I've had some fun ones lately, from giving pine trees their xmas hair-do with a machete, to collecting old furniture and cool industrial metal letter stamps out of the barn for the other house. Sitting on the back step this morning watching the mist over the hill dissolve in the sunlight, when the turkeys woke up. They jump onto the barn door and land with a thud, then all decided to come and visit me, a posse of turkeys advancing towards you making the chirruping noise (nothing like 'gobble gobble gobble') is quite strange. There's black ones, white with black tips and lovely brown and orange and white, their feet are like prehistoric lizards. Anyway, after hanging out for a while they all trooped up to the lowest point of the fence around the tomato field, where they can jump up and then slide down a sign that's holding it in place, to feast on the tomatoes. I left them to it, as Tovey said yesterday, ahhh let the turkeys have them. There's more tomatoes than he can harvest, even with someone just picking them full-time. At twilight the turkeys all go to this one fence post and fly into the tree, lots of squabbles over who gets which branch. they're very cool birds. the guinea hens are cute too, and the geese with their free-jazz syncopated sonic improvisations. Watching the sky last night, saw 6 shooting stars, two with ong comet tails Awesome!
Back in the city last week, finally ran into someone I know - I had been thinking on the subway that day, it'll probably be a school aquaintance who I don't even like - but no, this was great. Met up with about 20 youngish nyc artists and art school gang, who had arranged this 'performative art work' that involved going to all the gallery openings in Chelsea that night as a group - kind of like art parasites. So the work itself was going to see other people's shows - I liked that, we had a list of about 20 but I only made it to the 3rd one, Andrea Rosen, where in the second room I saw the name Ricky Swallow. Cool, I thought, maybe ricky's here too - and then there in the corner was a flash of bright red hair, and Nadine!!! It was fantastic, spent the evening with a room full of australians, mostly from melbourne, some living in nyc now, others just visiting, went out to some cool chelsea art bar - gavin browns - with coloured disco light squares in the floor, and then to the gallery dinner for the artists. In an old family spanish restaurant, with free-flowing sangria, tapas, paella, it was amazing, ricky is having a great time in LA, said he was glad to get away from having this 'name' and just make work in a slightly more anonymous environment. Maybe going down to visit Nadine in her studio in LA, really want to go hang out at the seedy 30's lounge bar at the Chateau Marmont Hotel.
That's all I have time for now, writing this at connie and franks - 3 deer heads on the wall, looking down with those big eyes and curly antlers, going up to John's place next door to check out the metalwork - he has a huge barn full of metal sculptures, and then harvest tomorrow for the storefront wednesday. It'll be interesting to be in manhattan on sept 11, listening to national public radio this morning, most people have something intelligent to say about todays poll "should america make a pre-emptive strike, and can the US win a war on terrorism." no, and no again.