Hooray for Heidi!

Heidi just let us know that the Danish Arts Council is generously providing two small grants to help with the funding of the Bledsoe project! We've been fortunate so far in this process to meet some incredible folks in Texas, like artist Jonathan Whitfill and the great folks at Texas Tech University, who have lent their time and support to us. And now with the support of the Danish Arts Council, we're realizing that the installation in September is really going to happen. But with this, is also the realization that we still need support to take us the rest of the way there. Please check out our page on kickstarter.com, Earthbound Moon: Site 001, even if you're able to help even with a $5 pledge towards our goal. Many thanks.

Carson is going to start working with the sign fabricator and Lee is headed back to Texas in the coming weeks... more photos and updates soon!

Kickstarter Page Launched!

To help with funding for our fall installation in Bledsoe, Texas, we've just launched our own page on Kickstarter.com: Earthbound Moon: Site 001

It's a website for creative projects that need some help with funding. It'll be up and running for the next 39 days, so please check it out and help us reach our goal. There are great gifts to go along with the different levels of pledges, including limited edition postcards from the artist sent from Bledsoe, prints of the finished sculpture and even dioramas of the sculpture site! Anything you can give will be much appreciated. Thanks!

Here's all the up-to-date info:

City Gardens

While Lee has been on tour of the east coast exploring and scouting locations, I've been working on Earthbound Moon's first local site (well, local for some of us). I've had the great pleasure of meeting and working with Tamara Loewenstein, who is part of Urban Share Community Gardening Project. The volunteers of Urban Share have created the incredible Free Farm at Gough and Eddy Streets in San Francisco. All of the produce grown at the garden is given away to those in need at no cost.

EbM's role at the Free Farm is to work together with Tamara (Curator and Community Arts Coordinator for the Free Farm), the surrounding community and the garden volunteer community to have an artist install work along the garden's Eddy Street fence. It may take some time before we reach the installation point, but over the past two weekends I've been lucky to spend time working at the garden.


The Free Farm welcomes volunteers to help with all the tasks necessary to keep the garden producing. If you every feel the need to get dirty and garden, they have work hours on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10am to 2pm and everyone can help.

Updated schedule

2010:
Bledsoe, Texas with artist Heidi Hove (in progress)
Portland, OR (negotiating site; artist chosen)

2011:
San Francisco, CA (site confirmed; curatorial committee forming to look for artist)
Lebanon, NH (proposal for site being written; artist curation to begin in July or August)
Baja, Mexico (tentative)
Portland, OR (tentative)
WA (site negotiation in July)
TX (site negotiation in June)

2012:
Crete, Greece
Mantino, IL
Cairo, Egypt
Portland, OR
Greenland, NH (near Portsmouth)
WA
TX

2013:
Tacoma, WA
Evanston, IL
Portland, OR
Holyoke, MA
WA
TX
AK
Denmark
Canada

2014:
Portland, OR
WA
TX
NH
HI
AK
The Philippines

We love NH & NH loves us

I was in Lebanon NH for about 23 hours. 23E has a great friend there in Adam Blue, who most of us know from grad school in SF. He and his wife are caretakers for a substantial land trust. And he is the Education Director at a pretty amazing arts institution in Lebanon, AVA Gallery & Arts Center.
Adam picked me up at the Greyhound/Peter Pan bus terminal, and while he finished up work in Lebanon, I dropped into their info center and asked the two ladies working there,
"Is there anything special I should do while here in Lebanon?"
The ladies looked confused and replied,
"No."
That's straight up New England honesty for you.
Left to my own devices I wandered around, finding a faboo Asian market run by an Indian woman. We chatted about Lebanon for awhile.

I also spent some time in the local comics store (couldn't resist a half price Poison Ivy action figure, who is now my trip mascot) and rummaging in the The Old Yankee junk store.

After work, Adam and I headed back to his place, where we ate with his wife and kids (all stellar company, and a pure joy to be around. His kids are wild yoginis, who demonstrated numerous poses for me. Nothing is cuter that a 4 year old and a 2 year old doing yoga! Their dog, Sadie, must also be mentioned, as she was freshly shorn, and looked and felt like a big happy teddy bear.) Then we looked at two possible sites for an EbM install - one is along a snowmobile path, and the other in a very isolated field. We chatted about the project, and I'm pleased to say that I am writing up a proposal for his land this month. An install in Lebanon could happen as early as 2011!

The land along the snowmobile trail. We're thinking to commission an artist to create a work a good ten feet up in the trees, so that it's visible to snowmobilers in the winter.

As if this wonderful news weren't enough, and baby yoginis weren't enough, and a bouncy teddy bear weren't enough, Adam let me drive his tractor (see top), took me for a row boat trip around his pond, and almost lost a shoe running when I kicked a wasp hive that made me curious. At the end of all these adventures, I duly examined myself from head to toe in my first tick check as an adult. Necessary, as NH is the current national leader in Lyme disease cases.

48 hours later I rolled into Portsmouth, NH (from Boston, where my uncle is hosting me) to meet with Carson's cousin Charlie. He and his family have a couple acres, and are very excited about being involved with EbM. We're talking about a 2012 install there.

Our goal is ten sites in ten years in New England (all within a few hundred miles of each other, so that a bike tour of the set could be completed in a week or a car tour in a weekend), and this gets us off to a very strong start! So, yeah, New Hampshire, Earthbound Moon loves you.