9/18 111Minna.

‘Destroy All Monsters’ group show embroiled all of the Djiboogo members as well as a healthy dose of OneShot artists and compatriots.

It Rocked.

Special thanks to Brown-Jean, and H!NGE

Next date February 5th.

You’d better be there…

News;

The Owners of Insite Gallery placed some of the Djiboogo Glass Ware into the Front Window Display.

H!NGE snapped a pic…

Thanks Claudia and Ina

Djiboogo studios is an intended communal effort, which in itself is a rare concept these days. All too often people find themselves either enamored by their own individual efforts, caught up in the somewhat mindless routine of their daily grind, or unwilling to try and help others with their own visions. Case in point: most cars on the freeway are driven by single people, though they are all in essence going the same direction, at least while on the freeway. We all like nothing better than to be in charge of our own destiny, at whatever the cost, however illusory the thought actually is. Communal art meets individual freedom in a strange unplanned grudge match. . .

A friend and patron of Djiboogo came to us with a project for the upcoming Burning man, which is in itself a sort of communal art project. The idea was to outfit an old mini school bus turned bio-diesel cruiser into an art car. He had just bought the bus, and had little practical idea what to do next. We went from stage one planning/concept and sketches to a near finalized design in a month and a half, pretty much only working a day or so a week. The finished idea was to create a sort of cloud bus which would “float” around on the playa and sprinkle water on people, providing a peaceful and soft blue landing pad if someone needed rest and/or refreshment. This involved a full paint job inside and out, welding attachments onto the bus for lighted clouds, building a portable sprinkling system, and several other transformational stagings. Some of the final transformation was to take place on the playa, as bolting four eight foot clouds onto the side of a vehicle is not encouraged by the CHP. In the meantime, we figured we might as well bomb out the whole van to generate a bit of excitement. . .

Anytime you begin any communal undertaking, it seems best to drop most of your pre-conceived notions about how things “should” be. The bus was first dubbed Blue Skys in honor of the eco-theme of Burning Man this year,  as a sort of nod to the bio-diesel nature of the van, and to attempt to bring a bit of thought to the huge levels of pollution we as humans are simply trying to ignore as we drive around every day by ourselves. Not that the irony of spraypainting this eco-message escaped us, as we created some nasty clouds of our own. But hey, we are nothing if not foolish apes. . .

In any case, as three of Djiboogo’s members got to painting, the name “Los Happy Bus” surfaced, perhaps due to the mad ramblings of Pashe, or the merciless and rare Richmond District sun. Los Happy Bus certainly wasn’t written on the initial planning sketch, but it didn’t take too long to get it painted on the van in multiple spots, along with some more secret and esoteric tags, modern signs of communal art-monkeys.

As we create art with an attempt to bring beauty and alternate thoughts to people, there exists a strange attempt at cost-benefit leveling. Do the ends justify the means? Will Los Happy Bus cause people to think about how to drive less, or perhaps change over to driving vehicles which can use bio-fuels? Certainly hundreds, or perhaps thousands of people will see Los Bus, but does this offset the environmental cost of the 20 cans of spray paint we splatted off into the biosphere? These questions are near impossible to answer, though they do indeed haunt our sleep here at Djiboogo. And yet one small example surfaced as Pashe wrote breathe.

Our lovely and tolerant neighbor drove up with her children and a couple of their young friends. The kids were, of course, fascinated by the magical maneuverings of Pashe’s talented digits. Before long they became comfortable enough to start asking questions. One girl asked if the police were going to show up. Pashe mentioned that the owner wanted us to make the van into art, and i suppose we all thought that someone had gotten into her brainwashing early on, that her first thought when seeing someone with a spray can was to call the police, not curious as to what design he was painting. They next did ask what Pashe was painting and little by little, the story of Blue Skys came out, including the fact that the van runs on bio-fuel. Some more questions were answered, and the girls stayed fascinated long enough to have to be called in four or five times to watch their movie. As if it gets any more entertaining (and worthwhile) than watching Paul Pashe with a can of paint, edumacating the youts about the value of cooperating crews, and art. . .