Kansas Crimson

japhy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:15 pm I was in grade school back then and no one took me seriously. I walked into the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in the 4th grade and was gobsmacked. I told anyone who would listen that when I grew up, I was going to design buildings like "this" some day. Guess who is the engineer of record for facade redesign of the Air Force Academy Chapel $350M renovation?

I was/am a dork, but I was a prescient dork of a kid.

I think Defixione thought I was a bit crazy when I first told him my plans for the Empire. Now he is about to get the coolest next door neighbor in the State of Colorado.

I've never questioned nor underestimated the dreams or plans of anyone who is truly "sent by God."

defixione wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 3:07 pm

japhy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:15 pm I was in grade school back then and no one took me seriously. I walked into the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in the 4th grade and was gobsmacked. I told anyone who would listen that when I grew up, I was going to design buildings like "this" some day. Guess who is the engineer of record for facade redesign of the Air Force Academy Chapel $350M renovation?

I was/am a dork, but I was a prescient dork of a kid.

I think Defixione thought I was a bit crazy when I first told him my plans for the Empire. Now he is about to get the coolest next door neighbor in the State of Colorado.

I've never questioned nor underestimated the dreams or plans of anyone who is truly "sent by God."

I questioned the lucidity of an aging woman who proclaimed divine providence was in the plan. But fuck it, if trump can be "God's chosen one" then so can I.

Great thread.

No shi*.

Job outta you, japhy.

That's cool, too

I showed this article to my wife a month ago and she has been obsessed with it ever since.

We are selling our old movie theater so there goes 16,000 sf of space that could have housed such a facility. Our art collection is a lot smaller than Nick's so we don't really need that much space, but we need a room big enough to house Big Blue.

We will get started soon on a permanent home for The Spud Lounge.

https://www.dwell.com/article/facility- ... e-1c0a9f3b

japhy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:42 am I showed this article to my wife a month ago and she has been obsessed with it ever since.

We are selling our old movie theater so there goes 16,000 sf of space that could have housed such a facility. Our art collection is a lot smaller than Nick's so we don't really need that much space, but we need a room big enough to house Big Blue.

We will get started soon on a permanent home for The Spud Lounge.

https://www.dwell.com/article/facility- ... e-1c0a9f3b

Brother, your horizons extend farther than mine. That's not unusual, but you and your wife actualize stuff I've only dreamt of. Partly cuzza money, but mostly cuzza clay feet...

kudos to you two

I am not a big fan of the advice to “follow your passion”. Passion is often a fleeting thing, and the younger you are the more likely you are change your mind.

But there is something to be said for “going all in” when you pursue a dream. There are pursuits that have deep personal meaning, founded on beliefs that are core to your being. Don’t lose sight of that shit. It can and will evolve as you get older, but if it is a deeply held value/belief it will always hold power for you. Taking your foot off the brakes and immersing yourself in it is the transformative part. That part will not be comfortable at all times, but will be rewarding.

My wife and I both grew up in white trash poverty in our early years. Never homeless, but in families that lived paycheck to paycheck in cramped quarters in the hood. Later things got better; high school and college were comfortable. But you never forget those early lean years and it instills in you a belief that you can pretty much get through anything. The thought being, “I have gotten through worse than this with less resources”. It builds resilience, I have often told my daughters that if there is one characteristic I value most, it is probably that; resilience.

And now we are at a point where we can go all in. We have been looking for the right opportunity for a decade. Finally, the right opportunity just fell in my lap at the time when we were most capable of grabbing onto it. Patience is key as well.

Now we have our mission.

I was on a conference call a couple of weeks ago with a real estate developer/art collector discussing our projects with an arts foundation and some Colorado economic development people. The decveloper said, “you know when we started this, I just wanted to have our project on the outskirts of town and keep to ourselves. But every time I talk to Japhy he brings something up that just draws us in and makes us realize, we have to connect to the town and be part of what is going on there. He just keeps pulling us in, so we had to go with it.” I smirked, he has a similar dream for his project and the symbiosis between our two projects and the power of the dreams were too much to for either of us to ignore.

A large scale renovation project is part archeological dig. We are still in that phase. Sifting through 70 years of detritus and sorting trash from dusty gems that just needed to be wiped off and stored for later reuse. The reuse pile is pretty big, but the trash pile covered 16,000 sf of building floor. We hope to finish that up in a couple of months so that construction can begin in the Spring. Partly because we are still in some ways those poor kids who feel as though they have to hang onto every penny, partly to immerse ourselves in the dig, and maybe partly because we like to remind ourselves that we are still resilient/tough; we live and sleep in the buildings while this work is going on. There are hotels 12 miles away and if the temps dip to minus 15 again we will stay there, but for now we sleep in the dust and the piles. To give us some semblance of normalcy we have put together an area we call “The Spud Lounge”. It has a massive blue vinyl couch, some age appropriately dinged George Nelson orange and yellow cabinets, a huge Eames surfboard coffee table, the ugliest Barco lounger I ever seen and two gaudy red lamps that I claim belonged to Sammy Davis Jr in his Vegas house. In the middle is an amplifier hooked up to two massive Magnepan MG1.7 speakers and a REL sub to give it all some kick. At the end of the working day we gather in the Spud Lounge and fire up the vape and rock ourselves to sleep.

When the developer/art collector and his wife came to town to visit and see if they were going to buy into our project we invited them over to the building that houses the Spud Lounge. They saw all of the stacked cabinets waiting to be installed, the mattress on the floor where we sleep and the large rolling bin full on tools, the makeshift kitchen, the inoperable bathroom…..and then they saw the Spud Lounge. At first glance you could tell they were thinking, WTF? Are these really people we want to collaborate with? Are they homeless? But once they locked eyes on the Spud Lounge they got grins on their faces. Developer: “So….what is THIS place?”. Me: “This is the Spud Lounge, it’s a members only hangout”. The developer says with a grin, “I think we need to hang out with you two, this looks interesting.”

Two days later I got the email saying they were all in as well.

That’s the power of the dream and going all in. Other people, if they are paying attention, will see through the dust and the mess and recognize it for what it is. A commitment to something that is core to who you are, and is bigger than you all by your lonesome. To go all in, you have to let go of some control and preconceptions, let the flow carry you along. The more you do it the more comfortable it feels.

japhy going all gutter with the tome

thanks, you are too gracious

I kinda wanna hang out in the Spud Lounge.

The Spud Lounge is the bomb.

It's fine.
It's no Satellite Shack.

We have more new neighbors in the Empire. We need to collaborate with these folks.

“Mud Frontiers” sounds like a good ass-play porno name

More collaborators coming to the Empire.

This concept of a nomadic museum is interesting. It is an opportunity to bring art to people/places that don't see much and is a reason for art lovers to see places they might not otherwise think of as travel destinations. The idea of placing a work in a wild environment and including the landscape in the vision for the piece, seems to intrigue artists.

https://blackcube.art

because no "conversation" is complete without a youtube video.....



Keep an eye out for something called Nomadic Mirror in 2021. It will give you something to do while waiting for the housing crash.

We have an architect engaged to help put the Spud Lounge together. His latest project should give him some well deserved national notice. By project I mean Folding Light, not the Spud Lounge.