Neil installing his painting.
Here's the window signage Neil provided for his 8-foot wide watercolor, which now fills the window at Right Window Gallery at ATA (Valencia Street at 21st) in San Francisco's Mission District:
"Come On, You Son of a Bitch," a watercolor by Neil LeDoux, is an imagined depiction of the last moment in the final episode of season five of the serial television drama, Lost. Juliet, a character from the series, is pulled down into a cavern by an electromagnetic energy field where she tries to manually set off a hydrogen bomb by hitting it repeatedly with a rock. For the twenty million people attempting to decode the innerconnected wreckage that is the narrative of Lost, the nuclear explosion, electromagnetic cocktail could result in a time warp to salvation . . . or just a regular atomic blast. Typically the show used a “fade to white” trope indicating a time skip to the future, the past, an alternative timeline universe, or to the astral plane of the after-life. Inspired by Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of sand mandalas, and by the endless maze of prime-time television, LeDoux’s watercolor will fade to white in the radiation of the sun’s nuclear fusion.
Neil in the window, standing in front of said watercolor.
The show will run through August 28, so check it out frequently, to see how the picture fades.
At the food and beverage tables, a popular zone of the opening.
The 5–8 p.m. opening tonight was sweet and well populated, with many students from CCA, and a sprinkling of poets. Mostly we just hung out, drank beer and wine, and ate veggie sushi and almond meringue cookies. For music we played the 2 CDs that were in my car—Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and I Am a Bird by Antony and the Johnsons, which set a mellow mood.
Audience reaching critical mass.
Once the audience reached critical mass, around 7:00 p.m., we played a 10-minute clip from the episode of Lost which Neil based the painting on. The clip was edited and looped by Neil's former roommate, Gordy.
Gordy and Neil.
For those of you who missed our screening, here's the final few minutes of Lost that inspired the painting:
After the screening, we just goofed around and drank and ate and chatted. I decided to use the the event and this blog as an opportunity to transcend my fear of being photographed. Intrigued by the filthiness of the mirror in the bathroom at ATA, I began my photo-reveal doing one of those girl takes her photo in the bathroom mirror photos:
When I bragged about this to David Brazil and Sara Larsen, we decided to do a bathroom photo shoot with them as well:
Kevin then took a headshot of me:
And, finally, here's me and Neil, who's been so sweet in all of this, he's the new love of my life:
