P'unk Avenue Window

Today, Mark and Justin showed up unexpectedly at the studio as we were closing out the day and had an impromptu jam session. Tomorrow they are playing a show at The Auction House in Audubon, New Jersey with Brian Mietz.

What ties these guys all together?

They were all former students of mine in the Multimedia Department at The University of the Arts (along with Alex Gilbert, Rick Banister, and John Benson).

It really makes me feel good to see them doing creative things together. I have always been impressed with their work and their spirt.

You might want to catch their show tomorrow night.

We remain committed to sharing what we view in our window… even if it takes us 2 months to post it!

Not sure why someone thought it was a good idea to park 1 inch from our building, but I was not about to complain.

In the continuing saga of interesting things happening within the view of our window, somebody was shooting a movie across the street at Ray’s Bar this morning. Lots of money spent for equipment and for people to stand around.

Here is a set of photos from this amazing event.

Many amazing things pass our window. Yesterday it was this guy with a shopping cart full of balloons.

Last friday, our master carpenter, Justin, installed one of our new windows in the studio. This one faces Federal Street and runs practically floor to ceiling when you are inside the studio.

We have a really cool view that unfolds throughout the day.

Yesterday around noon, a fire truck pulled up on E. Passyunk and stopped so that it was framed perfectly in the window.

It ended up staying there for awhile and was quickly joined with ambulances, news trucks, police and the fire commisioner.

It almost felt like we put the window in just in time to frame this scene. In the end it turned out that our neighbors directly behind us on Darien Street were overcome with carbon monoxide poisoning. It made me feel helpless when I found out that they had been suffering for days but waited until their son came down from New York since they don’t speak english before doing anything.

I see these neighbors almost every day since I live next store to the studio. They are a very very sweet elderly Chinese couple. They love touching my infant son’s face and smiling and waving to my 4 year old daughter every time they see them. And my daughter enjoys seeing them, as well.

If they had been able to talk to us, we would have helped them. I know we could have made a difference. However, our language barrier separates us.

I still don’t know how they are doing, and even now I don’t know how to contact them to say that I care about them and would like to help.

When you live and work close together in a city like Philadelphia, you watch life and death unfold in ways that are hidden from a sanitized suburban view. It reminds me of all of the skulls that you see on buildings in London to remind people that death might not be far away – memento mori.

In those times, people lived much shorter (and more brutal) lives and so these reminders actually served as encouragements to live…not fear.

Today we tend to close ourselves off from the world and pretend that we are not going to die. We try to remove these reminders from our view.

I really hope that our sweet elderly neighbors pull through so that I can give them a big hug next time I see them. I am sure that my daughter will want to do the same.

But, no matter what, I appreciate the opportunity to live in a place where life unfolds.

(more…)

One could make the argument that the Window began with a fabric purchase.

This material came from one of those stores on 4th Street in Philadelphia’s longstanding fabric row. It is a simple white “gauzy” weave that when hung over a window filters the light but does not block it completely.

My wife, Shannon, and I bought it to replace a very heavy and very dirty curtain that covered the window on E. Passyunk Ave in our new corner studio. We wanted more light. It instantly brightened the space, and an interesting side-effect was the ability to see what was happening outside very clearly in the day. The weave cut the glare, and in fact, the view of the outside was clearer than looking through a window.

It might have been a few days later before we realized… this effect was reversed in the evening and people could see inside very clearly and observe our bumbling-abouts.

This fabric got me thinking that I could project on it from the rear and see the image clearly from the street.

Our first show in the Window titled, “Unwatering” took place on Halloween night 2005. View some documentation here or read the press release.