For fear of boring you with the repetition, I haven’t posted many photos in the last few days. The thing is that CLOUD, for the time being, still just looks like a giant lump of steel. I mean, we’re twisting it and shaping it, but metal is metal. A person can only look at so many photos of a dude welding, right?

The last few days have been filled with the standard, mid-project doldrums. We’re in the calm before the bulbing storm, preparing ourselves mentally and physically, and prepping the sculpture for the rapid application of 400-pounds worth of light bulbs.

Our timeline looks like this: light bulbs arrive tomorrow (December 21^st, which also corresponds with the end of the world). We whip as many bulbs onto the piece as possible for the proceeding few days. The CLOUD is suspended from the ceiling of the gallery space on Christmas day, and then Wayne and I, and a team of yet-to-be-announced volunteers will spend until the first day of the new year hot gluing the heck out of the second edition of CLOUD. The Opening Reception for Art Experiment is on January 2, 2013.

If the world actually ends tomorrow, does that mean we won’t have to finish this damn thing? Or does it just mean that we’ll have a life-time supply of light bulbs in our bomb shelter?

Speaking of the end of the world, at least we managed to squeeze in a New Years Party before everything explodes. Last night, Wayne and I had the great pleasure of attending Garage’s annual employee New Years celebration. Because of Soviet roots in Russia, Christmas isn’t really a big deal. Instead, New Years is the biggest event of the year, and there are many New Years celebrations leading up to the actual change in the calendar year. Taking pity on the poor visiting artists from Canada, Garage invited us to their party, and boy oh boy, was it ever a blast! Thematically, it was a wear-what-you’re-usually-too-scared/shy-to-wear party and there was everything from dudes in heals (and managing very well, thank you) to gals in wedding dresses, folks face-painted like cats, bubble-wrap jackets, I Heart My Bed pajamas, Star Wars/Ukrainian finery (don’t ask), and a whole band dressed up in these weird, totally undescribable, plastic+sequined genderless future outfits. There was free gourmet cuisine and fancy booze – even flaming vodka! It was awesome. I think I speak for both of us when I say that I’ve never wished that we could speak Russian more than last night. Kudos to Garage for throwing the best staff party of all time.