a lot of my friends know I get excited by spaces that are in the process of disappearing. I'll get random calls from people as they drive by a particularly wonderful abaondoned mansion, or mystical disaster site. in a sense they are registering a report with someone who cares.
(on a side tangent: I recently entered a juried show at emory U. it was called something really vague like HOME. . . one of the jurors was high museum curator of photography Julian Cox and I'm sure they made a lot of money in submission fees and all, everybody wanting influencial JC to have a look at their work. at the opening, the jurors bemused how many of the hundreds of submissions were of abandoned houses, and otherwise dystopic architectural spaces. but, they decided not to show any of those. . .too obvious, too cliché. and I thought to myself, well actually these curators have missed an opportunity. maybe they should be listening more carefully to what the majority of image makers were presenting, repetitive and un-original as it may be. what's significant is that the response to a show called "home" was to show photos of foreclosures and abandoned mcmansions. this could have been a way to honor a message from a group of artists, and not just a competition to prize individual vision, as is the 20th cent art tradition. ok tangent over. . .)
so I get a call from Eggtooth (Jeff Dalgren) in the middle of a recent week day, saying that he could see a most amazing flooded field of cars just off the highway in Austell, GA. and, did I want to go back and photograph it? well, this occurred over a very sunny couple of days after a bunch of rain. I imagined the blue sky and fall leaves reflecting off the watery surface around angled old cars. . . I was experimenting with my medium format camera just then. . .so, the timing was just perfect for an art adventure.
we chose the next sunday, and went out to find this strangely aesthetic place just off the highway. as we got on a parallel side street, I recognized the area. . .it is a regular route I take to go to sweetwater (that polluted, wonderful river park just downstream from Atlanta).
when we arrived at the desired location, the water had submerged and the field of cars, now covered in a dry coat of georgia mud, turned out to be a war set for paintball players.
(caption: "lastcall" featuring Joe "Dirt" Schulten by Freda Jones )
Eggtooth, wearing a camouflage baseball cap and khaki millitary-esque jacket, had chosen the perfect dress code. we parked and walked right into the paintball complex. a multi-racial, friendly group hung out at the snack bar and picnic tables around which were several large fenced-in areas full of paint splattered objects. One area had giant stuffed X's, another was filled with numerous wooden spindle shapes. we went out to the farthest field where there were junk cars, fake buildings and the remnants of an old gas station. the environment, artistically unified in color by the beige layer of dirt and detritus of paintballs, was aesthetically interesting, especially underneath that blue sky. we set out to take a few photos, when an older woman with thick, large circular glasses and a ponytail came by to check us out. I asked to take her picture and we got to talking.
she said she also loves to take pictures and would we like to see them? she pins the best ones up (two of which she gave us). we learned that paintball is an organized sport, played in teams. and we also discovered an outsider artist.
ultimately we were disappointed to find that what we thought was a natural disaster, turned out to be a planned fiction: a mundane set for paintball. But, either way, it was not altogether unrelated to art. . . this is a place that flourishes adjacent to more refined city culture and here it was expressing itself unapologetically, artistically. for one, we both thought paintball as an activity has a lot of potential for painters. that all over this place, there were surfaces being violently decorated with paint. but the sets themselves were wonderful installations, so real and raw. . .so much a product of the hinterlands still chuggin' along outside the borders of a globalizing world civilization, where hunting and warfare are not yet politically incorrect.
we all live inside set designs. we call it architecture and interior design. among many things, intown atlanta is often a fictional suburb of upscale Disneyland, and what we found here was its particularly piquant counterpoint.
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