THE LIFE OF AN ORIGAMI ARTIST IS VERY DIFFICULT ... Part 1

or "1,000 CRANES GiVES 1,000 YEARS OF HAPPYNESS... THAT'S NOT TRUE !"

Among my VERY MANY setbacks at installing exhibitions, I remember one in particular ... This should be in 2000 or 2002, in Charlotte, NC, USA. Here, my friend Jonathan Baxter held every 2 years a huge festival in the city (some explanations and photo on my website page "Events"), with thirty small or large exhibitions, street performances, a " true "origami show in a theater, animation data to 14,000 school children in a month, a small convention of 250 attendees, and so on...

The Associate Jonathan Harvey Cohen, who had a major health problem shortly before the festival, Jonathan had called me to the rescue. I found myself so much against me the title of windy "artistic director", which meant in plain play the "idiots-on-how" a whole month in North Carolina, installing models that I knew not in places that I did not know, with people and equipment that I did not know (all in american, of course)...

Some lines and images on the SEOF here: http://www.ericjoisel.com/events.html So here I am "dropped" in a large bank, which gave a lot to the festival (he agrees that the result is very beautiful). In the USA, GREAT HUGE means bank building (ah ben ouiche). And when I say HUGE, HUGE is the building in question was can be 200 meters high. The ground floor housed shops, restaurants, dozens of cages lifts (yes, we are again on another planet as ours) and a huge glass where the expo was scheduled. 8) A to coffee, the glass was 30 meters high, a hundred meters long and a little less wide (I unfortunately did not find better pictures than those).

A gleaming marble covered everything, floors and walls. A huge rectangle of red carpet in the center of this huge room and could access a mezzanine gallery that was all around impressive by escalators. As is quite common in the U.S., real trees in imposing (if you have not yet understood, NOTHING had a "normal" size: cubes they used wooden pots filled part of this glass, aligned along the walls. A beautiful place of exhibition: mainly to install what was expected, ie a flight of cranes classic (you know, the ones who are supposed to bring happiness ...)

There were 100 or 150, each with a magnitude of 2 or 3 meters, with 2 points of anchorage not turn on themselves.The installation was likely to take the whole day it was up to 30 meters high with a basket (just as impressive as the rest) to hang each crane. I had to help me 4 or 5 people, but whose total IQ should not exceed my own, even being very optimistic ...

Like all cranes to fill the room, while describing a curve pleasant arriving at the center just below the trees, my task was overwhelming: while "my staff" remained grouped around peinard the basket, without any effort or physical or intellectual (which was probably better), I had to decide the exact point where the crane hook following, and then run across the room shouting my instructions, climb and descend the escalators at any look to judge the effect from every possible angle ( "ah there is a hole, add a crane, a little lower than the previous one, but is it captures south side" ... ). By mid-afternoon, all had good looks and hung on the latest cranes. As for me, I was exhausted by the concentration and energy spent. But I was quite happy with the result, I would say proud. But then arrived the monsters...

Finally at the beginning, I recognized that they were not monsters because they were disguised as Asian quite harmless, all bearing the same combination of cleaning employees. They seemed very interested in our strange occupation and birds suspended, making comments referring to the folding. About an hour after their arrival, we finally hanging the last crane. I make a final marathon across the room, mezzanine and escalators included: Certainly, in this type of facility, we could always improve something. But even if some cranes are a little too close to trees, if there are still some minor holes, I am satisfied with the result and announced the team that stops there.

Then monsters dévoilèrent their true personality putting itself in small groups, they immediately went out to push the trees toward the center of the room, until their huge pots touch Central carpet. Under this brutal action, the cranes appeared jokari balls, leaping, turning, foul them or in the trees ... A disaster! Their package done, it did not look for their unfortunate victims ... Why had we pushed the trees along the walls in the morning? Without doubt clean the floor. And why nobody had seen fit to warn me? Like any good American thriller, "it probably had nothing personal "... The poor cranes were probably, "in the wrong place at the wrong time".