Strike

Denver is done. We've struck the set, boxed the parts and are preparing them for freight.
It does feel like a little death. Long live Partly Sunny

Minsuk Cho's Pavilion

We had an absolutely great time tonight at the funky fresh dance partly under the pavilion. Minsuk and his crew turned a dark park in the center of Denver into a magical wonderland for all the artist and locals to just relax and funk it down. It was the perfect event to see the 2 weeks coming to an end. 

Air Forest

We went to the DJ party tonight at Minsuk Cho's Pavilion. It was a Seussian wonder. A strange, cloud-like vision when glimpsed from across the park, revealed itself some kind of polka dotted, elephant legged, wonder land.

Majora Carter & James Chace Stop In

Majora Carter & James Chace, formerly of Sustainable South Bronx, came by the space on Friday. Majora's work as the Founder and Executive Director of Sustainable South Bronx has long been inspirational, and we were pleased to include their green roof project in the show and to have her participate in the Green Constitutional Congress.

James, disputing the opening statement for the energy projects pointed out that he thought the ear of cheap and plentiful energy was not over, but in fact just about to begin. I hope he is right.

We're all looking forward to what Majora and James will be doing in their new ventures.

Hindsight Is Always 20/20

42 president: Bill Clinton

Today a bunch of us finally made it over to see Luke Dubois instillation. Besides the elegant display of graphic design it was pretty amazing to see the root ideals of each and every president and the eras from with they represented or country.  As we got excited from the words on each piece and laughed about like 5 year olds, Luke himself approached us seemingly from no where and proceeded to break it all down for us. This exact experience was happening the whole time in Denver; the people we look up to and respect just kept popping up around each corner. 

learn more: www.lukedubois.com

Busy Day in Denver

Today was the acceptance speech, and the change over the city was palpable. Where the streets were packed over the past few days, today more than 80,000 people spent hours in line to get into Invesco Stadium to see Barack accept the nomination. It was a relatively quiet day downtown. One of our team made it into the stadium, and the rest of us watched it from home. Although the experience was a mediated as talking to Lynn Hershman's DINA, it felt more immediate for knowing it was just a few miles away and being able to hear the boom out the window of the fireworks we were watching on TV.

Sharon Hayes' Performance

Revolutionary Love, happened today just outside our site. It was an incredible performance.

Check out news about it at Creative Time.

315 people came to the exhibit today!

Partly Sunny on 16th Street

Partly Sunny visits Polaris at Ebert Elementary

Yes putting up an exhibit in less then 6 months about reducing carbon emissions was challenging. But getting kids excited about big, hairy subjects that they might have not even heard of like hybrid cars or Xeriscaping was even a greater challenge! That was the conquest Charlie and I were presented with that day when going to Polaris at Ebert Elementary during the DNC. Imagine, going into a class room full of six year olds full of energy after a lunch break on the play ground, and bearing the strength to get there attention to talk about global warming. The amazing part was that they listened! Any recognition from one of the students that they understood that our planet Earth is vital to us and should be taken care of was gratifying.

But we shouldn’t think that these youngsters wouldn’t understand it when so many politicians don’t understand it either. Kids probably understand even more because at that age anything seems possible: sure cars that run on water or electricity why not? Or going to school everyday on my bike instead of by car that’s awesome! I want to do that! Once Charlie explained what Partly Sunny was all about, we went around to each group at the different tables. The students were interested in learning about these new inventions and wanted to know more about how it worked. Then it was their turn to explain what we had just taught them about from the sample projects from the exhibit. I must say we were quite impressed as to how much information they retained and how excited each group was to present their topic. And what better then postcards from all the colors of the rainbow as a party treat! :)

School Visits

Today was the day of school visits. We had two different schools come to the site, to use the exhibition as part of their curriculum this semester. DialogCity provided packages to teachers and schools throughout Denver. During the visit we invited students to make a pledge about what they would change in their own lives. It was our hope that teachers would use the "hint" boards in the salon space to help drive students back into the show to see how each of the projects offered a particlar way to to make these changes.



Three of us also went to visit the Denver School for the Arts to talk about art and design schools and invite them to come downtown and see the exhibition.

the exhibition is open!

after an entire week of construction, i must thank pete's coffee for supplying me with the best french vanilla-hazelnut ice'd coffee (aka) the 'van halen'. we thank you for your exceptional service and your enthusiastic curiosity. i can't describe how rewarding it is to see the partly sunny exhibition transform 'buck-wild' into a vibrant educational experience. located at the denver pavilions mall between the 'gap' and 'express', its wonderful to see a design exhibit juxtaposed next to two of the largest retail store companies. on over several occasions, visitors have entered the partly sunny space only to realize that there is nothing for sale. after welcoming these visitors and introducing them to partly sunny, it's amazing to see how magnetized people become. considering the overload of text and information throughout the space the average visitor will read almost entirely every project board. we could not have asked for a better location for partly sunny. the idea that people exit partly sunny with information and not with tangible items is good, especially when we are located within the largest shopping district in denver. people are interested in sustainable living, but first we must develop a common language that all people can understand. special thanks to the entire graphic design team at partly sunny. :O

Green Constitutional Congress

Monday night was the Green Constitutional Congress. It was quite amazing to see it emerge from Partly Sunny’s initial conversation with the Presidential Climate Action Project. Anne Hamilton’s chorus sung the audience into the Buell theater. Bruce Mau moderated the discussion, asking each of the panelists to imagine a new, more sustainable America. The panelists included: DJ Spooky, Bill Becker of the Presidential Climate Action Project, David Orr from Oberlin College, Jonathan Greenblatt founder of Good Magazine and Ethos Water, Majora Carter founder of the Sustainable South Bronx and Charlie Cannon, Partly Sunny. Following the presentation, each of the panelists was escorted out into the Lobby where audience members could engage them more directly. These post-panel discussions were produced by CO-LAB at Denver University.

(Photo courtesy of CO-LAB)

DJ Spooky

Bruce Mau Stops By

Bruce Mau and his team visited us in the space today to discuss the agenda for tomorrow’s Green Constitutional Congress. After walking through the exhibit he remarked that the BMD and Institute without Borders had spent almost three years organizing Massive Change and was amazed at what we created over these past 7 months.

Image courtesy of Bruce Mau Design

We're Open!

The show is up and we're officially open for visitors. It was a late night and we even hung the entry banners at the last minute this morning. But everything looks great and we've already had our first visitors -- a delegation from our home state of Rhode Island.

Opening Morning

After a late night, we opened to a beautiful sunny day. Many of the delegations are arriving today and you can feel the difference across the city. !6th street, the main pedestrian artery downtown, is packed and the security presence has increased at least 5 fold since yesterday alone.

Elevator doors are complete!

We are very excited to see our graphics on the elevator doors! The elevators are part of the indoor/outdoor mall we are in and they travel between three floors and the parking garage. Hopefully mall-goers will see them and be intrigued enough to visit the space!

Cableland

About half of the Partly Sunny team has the pleasure of staying (the rest of us are staying with very nice Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design students). Cableland is like a living museum, full of period furnishings, art and collectibles. It is technically the official residence of the Mayor of Denver. The city of Denver website says, "Cableland is located in Denver's hilltop neighborhood. This beautiful home was donated to the city by cable TV mogul Bill Daniels, and is available for use by non-profit organizations for fundraising efforts." Check out these pictures!

Making the title wall

We applied two sets of vinyl lettering to the large Tyvek that will function as the title wall tonight. Taylor measured, cut and hemmed the Tyvek, and had many hands assisting her in the application of the letters after carefully measuring out where they should be applied. The whole process took about six hours!! But it was worth it... the title wall looks great. It took almost all of the Partly Sunny team to hang this morning.

Hanging the topic "wallpaper"

After the Tyvek was attached to the framing, we have a big blank white space to start installing. The first exhibition graphics to go up were the large topic area bio banners. There are six topic areas for Partly Sunny with corresponding colors: food (red), land (green), energy (yellow), mobility (pink), water (blue), and buildings (purple). The space really looks like it is starting to come together with these banners installed!

Robischon Gallery Opening & Karaoke Convention 08

Tonight we had the pleasure of attending two gallery openings, the first was at the Robischon Gallery where Partly Sunny prints (made by Ben) were on display, along with the work of other Dialog:City participating artists, such as Ann Hamilton, R.Luke Dubois, and DJ Spooky.

It was nice to see the Partly Sunny prints immediately upon entering the gallery. There were also some postcards on the table by the door, and it was thrilling to see how eager gallery-goers were to fill them out! There was a great turn out for opening night, and we enjoyed the mild Denver weather as we traversed from Robischon Gallery to the Supreme Court restaurant where Daniel Peltz (Assistant Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD) premiered his interactive performance piece, "Karaoke Convention '08" (http://karaokeconvention.com/)







Karaoke Convention 08 created quite a buzz inside The Supreme Court restaurant, there were many television cameras and media contacts there. The performance started off with the Mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, giving a re-speech of Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" speech (originally given in South Carolina Democratic Primary).

Karaoke Convention 08 works just like traditional karaoke, with the words appearing on a screen and the performer on stage with a mic in their hand, but instead of song lyrics it has the transcription of the speech, and instead of music the sound track is sounds from the audience, or the hush of an attentive crowd.

Original speech by Barack Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVAPH_EcmQ

By Mayor Hickenlooper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OSAN8IOfQE

Robischon Gallery

Just some more shots of the opening. 

I still cant believe our show posters were hanging in the same room as Ann Hamilton. We all have something to say right! what an amazing night one i will never forget. thank you all for making this happen. 

Karaoke

We went to the Karaoke Convention this evening. The piece, by RISD’s own Daniel Peltz, turns recorded political speeches into a karaoke speak-along. There were some very inspired renditions of Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and John McCain. I found the whole experience unexpectedly arresting. Seeing and hearing the words of these speeches out of the context of the “original” speaker seemed to reveal the content of the speech and the character of the speaker more clearly than when they were spoken by candidates. Obama was especially interesting, because although his speaking tempo is restrained each speech has an enormous amount of information.

Dialog:Denver

Dialog Denver opened tonight at the Robsichon Gallery in LoDo (Lower Denver). Ben’s prints had pride of place – directly in front of the entry door and to the right of a beautiful sculpture by Anne Hamilton. The show featured work by DialogCity artists and Denver-base artists who are showing at the Unconvention in the Twin Cities in the beginning of September. The spurse collective had some very lovely drawings.

Partly Sunny in Denver

The White Walls of a Gallery

Arriving in the space on Sunday was very sobering. Even after all the work that was done by Kate Thiel and the folks at the Denver Pavilions it still felt raw and challenging. It wasn’t until the white walls of the tyvek started to go up that the "gallery" emerged.

The boards are arriving

The project boards started arriving from our friends at eblueprint today. Its like getting presents, just a few at a time.



We got them just in time for the Docent Training.

framing the space

its wednesday the 20th and we have been framing up the new/fake walls for the last 2 days. this has been quite satisfying, hiding the horrid club with our new walls really helps to stay motivated and understand what is actually going on in this space. until today framing has been smooth going. Julian and i took the ENTIRE DAY framing up the last wall, now this may have happened because we both lacked our morning coffee. but we later decided, after nearly destroying each other, it was the wonky walls are to blame for the difficult time.

its been quite amazing seeing the room transform in just 3 days. once the walls were up we had a great time covering them in our work. it was quite a sight to see charlie dancing about as we put them up. with life and color entering our space we are all getting excited and feeling like it is gonna be funky fresh.

these are my thoughts,

ben

The Framing Begins

Let's Get Started

So here we are in the Denver Pavilions. Located in the heart of downtown. No no, we're not showing in the Gap, and Express not so much. But right in between-that's us.
Hello!

Its an interesting space to say the least. Rumor has it that this used to be a bar/dance club by the name of Buck Wild. See, hey, it even has a dj booth-but it does not work. We tried. But we all brought our computers, an army of macs and pcs, so music is checked off. If only we had speakers.

We tried to pack light. As the blog lengthens you'll see the space evolve, but our outfits, not so much. Black shirt and jean shorts is my uniform for the next couple of weeks. Truthfully, tools took precedence, where with our army of computers, drills, chop saws and staple guns were thrown into the mix. Yeah, that bag was definitely opened at security before boarding our 6am flight.

Now that's dedication.