About PDL
Coin Drops
Theatre Hitchhiking
The PDL Rap
PDL as SBC at TAM
Offspring at Olympic Sculpture Park
Ceci N'est Pas Une Swing Set @ OSP
Portable Confessional Units
Deep Space at Motel, Motel, Motel
Seattle Art Museum
Unauthorized Audio Tour
SQUAT at Kerry Park
Wake(up) at OSP
Wind Farm in Bellevue Park
Blog Theatre
Zoo to You Foundation at Free Sheep
Portland Art Museum
Unauthorized Audio Tour
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Working as a group has some very distinct advantages. Collectively, you possess a greater, broader set of skills and resources, and the underlying peer pressure keeps you on track and braver than you would be as an individual. While these are all great perks to working together, the greatest advantage of all is the development of an idea. Sitting around a table with beers and notepads, PDL met regularly to discuss the kinds of projects we wanted to explore, and how they could be improved, or come to life at all.
Offspring at the Olympic Sculpture Park was a playful way to interact with large-scale sculpture, give it a new identity and humanity. Many of these large-scale sculptures were large and abstract. Giving them offspring made the viewer approach them in a whole new light.
We first started with Roxy Paine’s beautiful Splint — a sixty-foot tree constructed of polished stainless steel and anchored in an open prairie. On opening day, we slipped into the crowd holding a little thee-foot tall stainless steel sapling. Security guards were on high alert and the prairie was fenced off and inaccessible. Do we turn away? Make a break for it like a fan running across a baseball field? In the end, we found a patch of lawn close to Splint and spiked our little offspring in the grass. We called it Splinter. About an hour later, the museum’s executive director was summoned over by security to evaluate the intruder. She loved it. And Splinter stayed in the park for the next three days.
We had a long list of sculptures that could be mothers. And with a slight nod from the museum staff, it was time to do some baby-making. It was, after all, spring. The second time around we set our sights on Alexander Calder’s Eagle — the crowned jewel of the park — a thirty-five foot red-painted steel sculpture that stood in the center of the park overlooking Elliot Bay. Jason built a large nest out of branches, and three miniature “eagles” which we entitled Eaglets. And on a beautiful Saturday morning, we boldly walked the four-foot diameter nest into the park and set it on the grass beside the Eagle. It looked great, but would it last? The following weekend the museum staff included it in their park tour. A few weeks after that a strong wind blew an eaglet of the nest and the park took the set into custody. We are confident that they are being well cared for.
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