And you thought YOU saved everthing?!

Last night I went again to "First Friday"--downtown Honolulu art galleries, restaurants, bars, and shops that usually close just as soon as the working stiffs make a mad dash out before the sun sets, remain open til, gasp, nine pm so hip folks can linger(if they work there) or invade(if they're like me and work in the ghetto) the territory they normally turn over at sunset to more "gritty" clientele.
Sometimes there's free pupus, free booze, and if you're lucky, free candy (more on that later, of course). Always a crowd, always some live music , always a live artist doing live art demonstrations. Never boring. Never run of the mill. Never parking enough parking.

When I lived in Sac, we had "Second Saturday". I'm assuming it's the same kind of thing, though I must say that I did not go. I know, I KNOW!! It was just a few blocks away from my abode, and I did live there for nearly 4 years.

So why exactly did I never go???

Well, it could have been the fact that it was during the day--isn't there a code book that says you can't be snooty about art until the sun goes down?
It could have been because I couldn't remember it was happening-- "Oh, you mean it's called 'Second Saturday' because it's on a Saturday? Silly rabbit!"
It could have been because I thought it would be a really cool datey thing to do, and at that point, I seemed to be having dates at night so guys could say things like "Is it the lighting, or do you have silver streaks in your hair?" They were called highlights, jerk.

These are all valid, but, let's call a spade a spade (an expression I don't get, maybe because I always call spades diamonds just to shake things up) and get to the real reason I never got myself to Second Saturday.
I'm now quite certain it was because I wasn't yet ready for tick art.

No, not mimes with nervous tics.
Not imitations of Dali's melting clocks or time bombs.
Not collections of partially marked off shopping and to do lists.

Ticks. As in bugs, insects, blood-sucking creepy-crawlies.

This creepy, twisted, "I've got way too much time on my hands" artist had glued his four year supply of ticks collected off his dog to make a "dot" rendition of the Earth Mother domi (what this says about his opinion of ancient artists and women, I haven't begun to process yet). There was even a blurb about how he scaled the dot sizes to fit the "average" tick.

Then there was the farm scene using ants, the pineapple made of fruit flies, the framed dust pan contents complete with dust bunnies, dirt, and hair, the shellacked flying cockroach mobile, the vulva made from burrs he pulled off his socks after a hike...

It was all just freaky freaky...

...and totally freakin' cool! It was really good. Really.

I'm a little puzzled about what this says about me. I mean I know I was primed for this appreciation of tick art with my critter-filled country life childhood--I spent time collecting polliwogs, watching ants drag their finds back to the ant hills, had bats fly about my room in the summer, found scorpions in bed in the winter, and yes, pulling ticks off the animals...

But living here for the past year and a half has really brought me closer to my 4, 6 and 8 legged co-habitants. Who doesn't connect after watching the sun rise with the ants in the bathroom window sill, sucking it up to tolerate the crunching, squishiness of stepping on a cockroach as big as your shoe (hey, I do have doll feet, but maybe I exaggerate it's size a bit) because it's running around the classroom with parents expected any minute, bonding with the geckos that crawl the ceilings--they eat the roaches, you know...

Whatever the reason, it was the most original art I've seen in a while, even if you consider the bowl of Sugar Daddy pops labeled "Everybody should have one".

You may not want to eat them, but you have to admit that ticks stick with you, too. (Hah! I kill me, I really do).

Now, I'm not sure I want this kind of art hanging on my wall, but it sure has given me some ideas for my next craft project ;)