My blog about my search for a scheduled exhibition space for pinkStardust, (the second in my series My Manhattan Project – three installations about our atomic history: skin, pinkStardust, and NUMEC: Destroyer of Worlds continues with…
The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests, a body of work being created as a fundraiser for pinkStardust. “Suggested” by my main muse and collaborator Andy Warhol as a way to fund materials and supplies for making objects, images and purchasing surfacing supplies (like pink sand and pink bingo chips), The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests will be sold, hopefully, at an auction-like event that will both raise money and promote the yet unscheduled exhibition of the installation.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am hoping to create the installation somewhere near the dirt where many of the events I am talking about in pinkStardust took place. Of course if we are talking about fallout, any place in the US, or the world for that matter, works, but that’s a discussion for another time.
The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests is a series of thirty-two works on canvas, skinned in aluminum foil (matte side out) then loosely painted with black acrylic paint. I am painting my impressions of the various tests in black and white (and shades of grey) based on images downloaded from the net – and printed out in black and white.
This image shows a prepped canvas and printed image of the the Badger test, blown on April 18, 1953 – the 6th in Operation Upshot-Knothole, Nevada Testing Site (NTS), 60 miles NE of Las Vegas.
The canvases are 16″ x 20″, the same size Warhol used to paint his 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans series, exhibited in Los Angeles Ferris Gallery in 1962. Surfacing of the canvases for The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests was chosen to reference Warhol’s 13 Most Wanted Men – created for the World’s Fair New York State Pavillon in 1964. This piece was not seen by the public as it was ordered to be painted over – which it was, using silver paint.
And of course the foil references Warhol’s material of choice to cover the ceiling and walls of his studio in New York city called the Factory (a feat conceived and completed by his good friend Billy Name).
In my previous blog posting I wrote about the relationship between pinkStardust, Warhol and me, within the context of using aluminum foil as a material for objects and imagery for my installation. As I continue my blog, and my search for time and space for pinkStardust, I will be talking about the entanglement of Warhol in the story told in the installation itself.
As with any discussion of historic, and historical, events, we all know that they do not happen in a vacuum. People’s interactions and participations in our atomic testing times are no different and are what pinkStardust is all about. Odd choices made and synchronicities uncovered during research into the time of pinkStardust (roughly 1945 – 1970, with a narrowed focus on the 50s & 60s of the Cold War years) that I wrap in the colored cellophane of atomic testing viewed through the rose colored glasses of atomic tourism.
I have begun painting The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests – having completed about five of the canvases (mostly, as I may tweak them a bit).
One of the things that has struck me is how beautiful the images of those tests are when viewed as abstracts. When the truth of the images seeps in however, they are chilling. It is clear that what the images portray just isn’t “right”. The phenomenon of the explosions feels like they go against nature itself – forced upon her in the most violent way…
This is an image from Operation Ivy of the test titled Mike, exhibiting a phenomenon that sometimes happens early in the detonation process. The phenomenon is called Rope Trick – this image was taken by one of the many who photographed the tests, Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton, or “Papa Flash”.
I will be painting more images of Rope Tricks from other tests as I move through The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests.
And I will be revisiting this series from time to time on my blog as I complete the canvases, and schedule the event where they will be sold.
Next time I will write about the form pinkStardust has been developing since I first conceived it, and began researching for it, in 2012 – how the story is framed, the objects, images and surfacing I’m using to tell the story, and the way the installation takes on the look of the pop attitude that overlaid the way our government asked us to prepare for possible nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
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