Part 2
"Eyes Without A Face" by Billy Idol.
Listen.
When I called Ariel to ask if she wanted to participate in this little project, I was sitting on my roof. This is where I sit sometimes to quiet my head, though sometimes my thoughts just speed up and propagate there. I had decided to take the weekend to put together a song-inspired bedroom "exhibition" and Ariel crossed my mind. We do not know each other well but she is an artist, we work together, and I like her vibe, so to say. She answered my call and I (with very little preamble) I proposed we have a two-person "show" based on a pop songs. The locations would be our respective bedrooms and very view people would see them. Without hesitating she said yes, but she had only that night because she was leaving town in the morning.
Opening the files she sent to my work email address was like opening a letter a friend taped to your door; there was something so tactile about the images. I had not seen much of Ariel's work, nor her room, and seeing the two together made an immediate kind of sense.
She had not told me ahead what song she would use and when I read the title, "Eyes Without A Face" my mind immediately served up the deep vintage voice of Billy Idol. I'm all out of hope... The three things together, her drawings, the images of her room, and the song, made me feel like it was some teenage suburban afternoon, after school, in a friends room with the radio on. The Adults might call it wasting time but we would know better and still do.
• • •
Ariel Claborn grew up in Alabama and now makes art and teaches art to children in New Orleans. A communist once said to her, “So goes the south, so goes the nation.” She said, “I’ll be here.”
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