Our Texas buddy, Michael Sieben and all around great artist, blogs up a show that he and his Okay Mountain comrades put together at the Creative Research Laboratory in Austin, Texas.

" It's Gonna Be Everything"
Okay Mountain at the Creative Research Laboratory in Austin, Texas
January 2008

In true form I managed to wait until this show was down before I found the time to sit and work on this blog. For that I apologize. Hopefully if you really wanted to see the show you were able to see it. But if you wanted to see the show and you weren't able to see it then don't be too sad because that's what this blog is all about. And if you didn't see the show and you're cool with that because you totally couldn't care less... well, that's cool too. Just hit the back button now.

Here's how this whole thing happened. Jade Walker who is the Director of the CRL (Creative Research Laboratory) approached Okay Mountain and invited us to show our work in their space. Normally the gallery is reserved for UT (University of Texas) students and faculty but they made an exception for us since almost half of our staff graduated from UT. (We also have a mighty legion of UT students interning at Okay Mountain at any given moment.)

We (Okay Mountain) decided that we wanted to fill the space entirely with new work that had not been exhibited anywhere before. We also decided that we didn't want to exhibit any individual personal work that had not been created specifically for this show. So we sat down and came up with some ideas for a few large scale installations, some videos, and a series of drawing games that each of us were to assign the group. Our hopes were that by working together on all of the projects for the show, we could begin to investigate what the aesthetic of Okay Mountain is as a group. Actually I just made that up. Our hopes were that we could make enough work to fill the space and that we wouldn't get bad reviews.

Okay Mountain lives behind a pinata store and we thought it would be cool if there was a pinata presence in the show.

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

Nathan breaking eggs.

Serious artists.

Art photo.

Okay let's get serious now. That means you Justin.

There are photos later in this blog that explain why the pinatas were decapitated. And I'm pretty sure pinata has an accent mark over the 'n' or the 'a' but I don't know how to make that happen with this computer.

Another one of the sculptural installations we worked on was a piece titled: "All of the beers we drank together."

We started saving our beer cans as soon as we found out that we were going to have a show. Hi Tim and Jacob. Cut, cut, cut.

Some of the beer cans had special prizes inside of them like mold and rancid cigarette butts. Nobody said art was easy.

But it's all for the greater good.

Peat. Designer of the "beeramids."

Almost there.

Another part of the show involved painting cardboard

to make it look like plywood in a weird dream or a cartoon.

Everybody paints wood grain differently. Hi Sterling.

Whoah... trip on that.

More trip out.

Technical blueprints.

You get the idea.

Justin designed a sun sculpture.

Don't worry. It did.

There was fishing line attached to the sunglasses that stretched through the building to the restroom door. Anytime the restroom door was opened the sunglasses would raise up. You know, like at that one bar. The Christmas bar.

See that picnic table on the right?

That's the picnic table in Okay Mountain's backyard. We spend a lot of time sitting at that picnic table.

We all decided it should be included in the show. Hi Ryan.

While we were installing we used the table the same way that we use it at the gallery. Eating, drinking, assembling zines, etc. Hi Carlos, hi Ayham.

There was a plastic pig on the table at some point.

Then jump ahead and a bunch of people showed up after we cleaned everything (except the picnic table.)

The performance aspect of the night happened when our interns showed up with tacos for everybody (Thanks Elizabeth and Jacob.) We had Taqueria Chapala (which is right down the street from Okay Mountain) cater the event. So during the opening people got to hang out on our picnic table and drink beer and eat tacos. Just like we do at the gallery all the time. It's that simple.

Justin designed custom Okay Mountain taco wrappers for the occasion.

Dave Bryant was there.

So was T. Paul Hernandez. This is inside the largest beeramid.

Allison was there.

The entrance to the beeramid was not visible unless you walked around to the back of the sculpture. So people would walk behind it and then discover there were people inside. "Hello" they would say. "Hello" we would reply. Then beer.

Skateboarding.

Last photo of the night.

The last 16 photos of this blog were taken by Carlos Rosales-Silva who is the Senior intern at Okay Mountain. This is Carlos.

And his t-shirt collection is nothing short of amazing.

These are installation photographs to help give a better view what the show looked like as a whole.

There are nine of us that co-own and operate Okay Mountain. Nine heads, one mission. Debt.

An example of the drawing games that we assigned each other: "Corkey's: A floppy disk is being passed around with a Microsoft Paint file on it. You must open the document and add to it using Microsoft Paint and then save over the file on the disk and pass along. Corkey goes last."

We let the picnic table collect junk while we were installing and it continued to collect stuff while the show was up. I'm not smart enough to make that sound art smart. Let's just say visual record or something like that.

That's pretty much it. Ultimately our goal for the show was to spend time with each other making stuff and having fun. I think all of us wanted the show to be inviting and warm which is how we hope people feel about Okay Mountain as a gallery.

Thanks go out to Jade Walker for inviting us to show at the CRL. And many thanks to everybody at the CRL that helped us with the installation and de-installation. We really appreciate the opportunity. And thank you for reading and checking out the photos. Unless you're only sitting through this to say something mean. In which case please go hang out on a skateboard message board somewhere.

Links: http://www.okaymountain.com
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~crlab/ {moscomment}

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