Another construction related photo today – only this one is screaming Halloween to me. Maybe it’s the orange color, or the triangular pieces that make me think of Jack-O-Lantern eye cutouts… or perhaps it’s the creeeepppyyy black fingerprints… hmmm did you notice those??
Matt has been working on the construction site at Constitution Square (next to the New York Avenue metro in NoMA) for awhile now, and he takes all these realllllly cool pictures of the construction materials that make me go “whoa what *is* that!?!” There is so much color and texture and rhythm to be found in these not-yet-assembled pieces — eventually when put together it will go something like this. Or here is some time lapse photography. Since there are way too many pictures to post them individually, I threw them all together into a composition I would call blue, green, red: 3 circles, 3 squares, 3 lines
Here is a photo of something happening at Matt’s place of work, a construction site in NoMa. I’m not sure what is going on here, except that I see some concrete and some rebar, which looks straight so I give the workers an A+++ for their job so far.
The image quality is terrible, as I took this with a camera phone on full zoom, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share this picture of three port-o-potties suspended a good 70′ in the air from a tower crane. I certainly hoped they checked to make sure no one was in there before lift off. Watch out for the first step, its a doooooosie!
This morning, just before sunrise, I covertly climbed up on to the roof of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms headquarters to snap this picture of the Constitution Square job site. It was quite a daring maneuver, if I don’t say so myself, but these are the lengths I will go to get a shot. Dedication, baby.
I am of course lying but this is a view taken from on top of the ATF at 5:39a from the camera that Clark Construction recently installed to monitor the site. Here is LINK to see the webcam. Pretty fancy stuff. It was only installed yesterday but eventually we will be able to do time-lapse of the project being constructed. The portion of the site directly in front will be the new Department of Justice headquarters, to the right is a spec office building, and to the back we will have a large apartment building (440 units), a Harris Teeter grocery store, and a Hilton Garden Inn. This should only take a few years….
Tonight we finished the infrastructure of my display at Artomatic. I was unable to get to the site selection process early enough to get one of the true walls that were reserved for the 2-D artists and was asked to be “creative” with my display area. I ended up grabbing a smallish wall that was divided a 10′ wide window. After looking at things for a bit I decided that there wasn’t going to be enough true wall area to display my photos how I wanted to….so I decided to build more. After toying with the idea of a rather complicated wire/tension system I opted to go with a grid of 2×4’s which seemed a bit easier. Lori was so excited that we finished the wall that she decided to do some star jumps.
The NoMA BID and Artomatic hosted the “Blank Canvas” Media preview of the new space for Artomotic 2008 yesterday, and I, as an esteemed member of the media, was able to get a sneak peek of the space. Artomatic will be taking up 8 entire floors of the new Capital Plaza building at the corner of 1st St. and M St. NE. From the press release Artomatic is billed as “a creative community that collaborates to produce and present a free arts spectacular.” 2008 will be the 6th installment of Artomatic since it was started back in 1999 and displayed at the historic Manhattan Laundry buildings on Florida Ave NW.
Artomatic has grown steadily from then and has gained significant media and artistic community attention. The event will run from May 9th to June 15th and over 50,000 visitors are expected. Of the 1,000 artist spaces available to register over 600 visual artists, 80 performance artists, and 80 bands have signed up. The growth of Artomatic has this year attracted bands from as far away and NY and Texas. It should be quite a spectacular event, but of course the main reason you should attend is to see my photography exhibit (and then purchase the prints). Also, they are going to have an “interactive” tattoo exhibit if you are in the market to get some ink done.
The “Blank Canvas” event gave me the opportunity to scope out the raw space, appreciate the tremendous views from the 12th floor, and take a look at the cute little model they had of a typical floor plate. The friendly folks from DC On The Fly were at the event to provide refreshments; I had some turkey chili that was spectacular. These are the guys with the funny little green electric vending carts that have begun popping up around the city.
As a start of the “Blank Canvas” event they had a litteral blank canvas available for visitors to do some painting on. Here is one of my masterpieces and here the other.
I am greatly looking forward to this event.
LETS GO NATS!
While we were not able to score tickets for tonights opener against the Braves we did take a stroll down to the new stadium to see what could be seen. The stadium looks great, especially considering the break-neck construction schedule that they had to adhere to. My hats off to HOK, Clark, and all the other designers and contractors that pulled it off. A few things (namely the glut of above grade parking, very short sited) leaves something to be desired but the over all design is cohesive, indigenous, and impressive. The neighborhood is coming up nicely as well. The Half Street and Yards developments look particularly encouraging.
Zimmerman coming off with the nail-biting bottom of the 9th win tonight should be good for the team. Hopefully this is a team that the city can continue to get behind and support.
…and oh my god the massive scoreboard looks amazing