The popArt darlings were born about ten months under warm low hanging lamps at a little grandma-style diner. It was just Heliohead and me asking short stacks of pancakes age-old questions about why art happens. Maybe not even why art happens, but why people make it and then insist that it be consumed by the public. Why people describe themselves as artists when they spend 40 hours a week behind a desk, behind a counter, behind some one else’s face. What makes some people artists, and some people, like us, not?

My mother thought this meant that what Heliohead and I were doing was supposed to be a joke: a joke on the pretentiousness of art. Maybe at first it was…but by now…it isn’t.

We decided to use found objects from thrift stores, trash dumpsters, and the dark recesses of our closets because we don’t have a lot of money, because Heliohead does have a lot of STUFF, and because refuse isn’t pretentious. He actually has an uncanny gift for finding riches from garbage heaps out curbside, and as I soon found out, the hunt for objects was addictive. Too many times Heliohead would give me a gift of something he found that ‘seemed like me’ that left me stunned and touched by generosity.

What we discovered:
First we found out that wine and building art do not mix. You end up passed out on a pile of wood chips, tiny plastic soldiers, and dress patterns only to wake up with a drill bit poking you in the butt and a glue gun burning your face and no art made.

We found out what it means to work as a team and individually at the same time. We flexed the courage and curiosity to ask for guidance about what balances, about what tools to use on a job, and how to develop a personal style.

We learned how to commit our time and energy to each other once a week. How to follow through. How to support the other when something good came out, and how to gently prescribe criticism when it didn’t. Then we took that criticism, worked around the criticism, or blew off the criticism completely. We never constructed any piece here, without the other present, although sometimes one had the inspiration, and other didn’t.

We learned patience because sometimes things didn’t come together in one day, and sometimes it didn’t come in two. Sometimes I’d sit amidst a pile of scraps on Heliohead’s kitchen floor, and nothing would come. Sometimes, it would happen in twenty minutes, and then sometimes, nothing else would happen. Sometimes, we’d have to just walk away and drive around the neighborhood or dig around in dumpsters to shake off the disappointment and then call it a night.

We learned how to get lost in our task, and it was an indulgent way to pass time.
We learned to devote ourselves to a long-term project without a defined conclusion and just let go.
We found that our own pride in the product was its greatest compliment.

So, the big day is here. And it seems more like a birthday. Like planning the birthday party I’d want to go to. I blush too much to call myself an ‘artist’, but most people I’ve known that can, still use words like ‘being true to yourself’ or ‘we do it because we don’t know anything else’.