FYI – if you want to see some fun black-and-white photos of the NY event (mostly pics of artists who participated), please visit Flickr here.

Here are some images I took during my rare forays away from Weigh your Words…

Babies everywhere

Fort Jay – a nice place to sit in the shade as bicyclists whiz by:

This juggler turned up everywhere.. including a stop by Weigh your Words to throw a few words around.

Lots of installation involving writing wishes, hopes, or fears and decorating a structure:

A people-operated giant rubber music box:

And of course… the cloud.  Here it is during construction and then during the event.

And here is the interior – with DJs playing music and a closeup of the structure – thousands of recycled plastic bottles!!

Cool huge moving sculptures, like this ride-a-dinosaur and frogmobile:

An great excuse to dress up and strut your stuff:

Some just people focused on the words, others incorporated them into self portraits and arranged groupings.  It all begins with the search for the words that best describe you or your friends…

Most of the people in this group did not speak English as their first language, so they spent a lot of time talking about what words mean and carefully choosing words that would describe them as a group:

Some people really felt the need to arrange words in  lines…:

                  Hearts were common…

And finally, my favorite – the reclining selfie:

From demure corona to full hair-scape to body decor…

The seesaw drew attention form a wide variety of visitors.  Kids, of course, enjoyed just making the thing balance, regardless of which words were in the bowls.

Some had to work hard to achieve balance, moving stones along the edge of the seesaw until they got it just right.  Which words did they have to move to achieve balance?  Some found it hard to decide which word to move out of a bowl of words carefully chosen to describe their attributes.

Sorting positive and negative attributes can be therapeutic, cathartic, revealing…

I was happy to see people really get involved in sorting the “clean” and “dirty” words.  As usual, some people got quite concerned when they found words in the “wrong” bin.  “Why is ‘evil’ in the ‘clean’ bin?”  And they were so relieved when I told them they could move it.  Amazing how such a simple act can give someone a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  Of course, some people tried to be subversive by sorting words in what they considered controversial ways.

We had rainy weather on Friday while setting up the event.  But Saturday and Sunday were both sunny and breezy and beautiful.

In fact, you say the weather was perfect … and to celebrate, I am posting here a photo of one of my many visitors – a “perfect” child!  Thanks Eleonora for the pic!

The next few posts will give you an idea of what people did with the stones and the space.  I will also post some images of Governor’s Island and some of the other exhibits at FIGMENT NY.

To those of you who visited Weigh Your Words – thanks for coming by!

Here is a link to the artists participating in the FIGMENT event this weekend.  It includes links to a site map (which I believe they will provide links to so you can use an app at the event, if you have a smart phone).

There are a lot of us…

I will be on Colonel’s Row, way at the back of the grounds, in a nice shady-ish spot (#143) on Clayton Road.

J

Wonderful news – I will be able to drive my car onto Governors Island.  That will make loading in my materials for FIGMENT much much easier and getting off the island on Monday much faster.  I have 6 boxes full of stones (the list is up above 800 words – about 150+ words in each) and they are quite heavy.  Also, I am going to bring rubber matting so people can sit on the ground and not get too wet and/or lose rocks in the grass… etc. etc.

The weather promises to be pretty nice, so I hope lots of people come to play.

I have added the Word List as of June 7 – you can find it in the Weigh Your Words Info section to the right.

More later once I get there, images as well as anecdotes.

If you are in the NY area – come on down!!

This project has been dormant for about 9 months.  The components have been stacked in the corner of my studio.  And now, I am thrilled to announce that the bins and seesaw will be part of the FIGMENT NY event on June 8 and 9 on Governors Island in New York!

This is an outdoor, 2-day event full of interactive art activities.  I will have to edit the word list somewhat, since all pieces are supposed to be “kid-friendly.”  At first, I thought I had loads of offensive words, but now that I look at the list, I only find a very few that will probably have to go… And I am taking the opportunity to add some new words.  Please feel free to send me your suggestions if you see holes in the list.

So, if you are in the NY area, please come by!  Governors Island is accessible by ferry from Lower Manhattan.

Pray for great weather and come and play!

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I have finally gotten around to checking the stones from the installation, and have made a list of the stones/words that were no longer in the space when I deinstalled.  Out of 704 words, 35 were missing.  I had considered offering the stones for sale during Artomatic, but decided against it in order 1) to simplify my life and 2) to see how people interacted with the words without adding the layer of monetary worth on top of all the other possible “weights.”

I knew about one word that was gone for sure before the show ended.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, someone left me a note letting me know that they had taken “soulmate” and that it would be a gift.  I sure hope the recipient accepted it, but also continue to muse on the irony of someone “stealing” a stone with that word written on it.  It would have been easy enough for the gifter to simply take the idea and write on their own stone.  Also, would you want your soulmate to give you something they lifted and give it to you, presumably as an assurance that you were, in fact, their soulmate?

Stones that found a new home

Then, Deb Jansen, a friend who had also participated in Artomatic, told me that she had taken four more stones (beautiful, awesome, powerful, and goddess) in the last hour of the show.  I appreciate the honesty, and no problem, especially at the bitter end.  Presumably no one else was going to use them this time around. And as she says, “Sometimes using actual written words in visual art – literally spelling it out for someone – can be that much more impactive, that much more healing for both the artist and the audience. A paintmarker taught me that.”  SO … I’m glad to help and it’s good to know that I should replace those words.  The stones themselves were pretty cheap (from a garden supply store, purchased in 50-lb bags) and covering them took a bit of work, but, really no big deal.

I was sure the word “bitch” would walk, but it didn’t.  Also, some words may have been appealing to folks with light fingers, but because the stones varied in size, more tempting words written on larger, baseball-sized stones were less likely to disappear.  Unfortunately, I chose the stone sizes fairly randomly, so I didn’t keep track of which words were on smaller or larger stones, and have no idea whether all the words that walked were on smaller stones.  An interesting bit of info, if it were possible to find it.  Oh well…

The total list is an interesting one (see below).  It’s fun to imagine who might have taken which ones, and why.  Too bad I didn’t have a stealth camera so I could find out.

artsy, awesome, badass, beautiful, bloodthirsty, cutthroat, dangerous, depressed, disabled, egghead, foxy, goddess, hip, hunk, independent, loud, misanthropic, Momma’s boy, noisy, OK, old-fashioned, poet, powerful, queer, ruthless, seductive, single, soulmate, survivor, swanky, sweet, transgender, truthful, user, vociferous

Another note – I am a copy editor and proofreader, but I am not perfect when I review my own work (no one is – that’s why proofreaders are so important!).  After I had cross-checked the word list against the rocks, I discovered a few duplicates on the printed list AND a few duplicate stones.  That’s what you get when you are dealing with over 700 items and Word and Excel don’t sort properly across formats (and you are exhausted and pressed to update lists at 2 am).  I promise to check more thoroughly next time, for those of you who may care about these things…