Its true sometimes hearing an artist talk about a piece can sometimes ruin it. It can turn something complex and elusive into something you can catch, kill, and categorize like a butterfly. But I don't mind giving some of our process away.
Crystal and I wanted to embark on a collaboration and we sat down during a walk one day and arrived at the idea of a semi coming out of a wall. I don't even really remember how but it was spontaneous and we both were struck by the thought. We also happened to have extra drywall around and realized it was the perfect material for a large object that was going to integrate with architecture that was made with the same stuff. To walk around it is really like moving through a hall with a particularly dominant wall. It really feels permanent. But it won't be. We are taking it down this weekend after 2 weeks of final display. My dad made an apt connection to Moby Dick and I really love the allusion.
We went to a truck fair south of Portland and photographed hundreds of trucks so we could pick out details we liked. We combined those details into our own custom truck to help it become an allegory for a trucker. The rows after rows of trucks somehow personalized to be unique seemed to be a big part of the culture. Even if that doesn't really come across that was on our minds.
Along the way, for me at least, there entered in the story of the trucker and it became more about that. The final piece doesn't say much about it other than in the hood ornament and the fact you can actually sleep in the sleeper cab, but I am really in to the last cowboy idea and the truck for me is just a big symbol for the mystery surrounding the person in it. The sleeper cab became a huge challenge for me and I wanted to put another somehow humanizing installation in it to get that across but in the end I didn't want to detract from the impact of the actual thing we spent so much time on. The truck. So we just slept in the cab and made it our own little mystery.
