Friday, October 9, 2015

Sweeping Painting Walking Photographing

Friday October

Tomorrow morning I leave for Fukushima via Tokyo - a long trip for only 3 nights there, but I promised Harper I would not stay long. She cried when she found out I was going to Fukushima - "where all the radiation is everywhere." People live there, sleep there, eat there, have thyroid cancer there. It is the least I can do - to go there, to bear witness.....not enough but it is something.

So I swept the front entranceway and weeded the little garden, painted their plain + often overlooked donation box and then asked Bernd and Maggie Phoenix, the volunteer co-directors of the World Friendship Center if they wanted to take a walk with me to find the Hirose Collection where a show is up of Christian Boltanski and Tim Rollins and KOS.

I make a photograph of the morning stairway every morning on my way to breakfast.
 Bernd and Maggis Phoenix - cool cats from Sante Fe, New Mexico, the current volunteer co-directors of the World Friendship Center asked me to spiff up the plain wooden donation box. They gave me free reign - Bernd asking for Hello Kitty and Maggie showing me her rainbow peace sign. I took the hippie happy route and I like it a lot. Little tubes of paint go a long way......listening to Billy Bragg.....

 A walk that should have taken 30 minutes took 2 hours - trying to find the Hirose Collection....





 after asking umpteen people for directions - all turning the map around and around - we finally found it - a doctor's private collection. he came down from the office with his stethoscope in his pocket to meet us.....Christian Boltanski:




















 the doctor and his Tim Rollins + KOS Autobiography of Malcolm X piece
 garbage protector net
 Bernd and Maggie Phoenix, good people, new friends.









 Urinal - way cool design




 Lawrence Winer at the Hirose Collection




A-bombed trees


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