Phone Book MashUp!

Like most other projects, this one is beginning as a huge pile of stuff in my kitchen nook….er…studio. It is blocking my drawing table and my easel, this pile of phone books. It has grown since our original meeting–I pilfered my neighbor’s phonebooks (they’d been on her porch for weeks, wrapped in plastic), and I found a couple more under my kitchen sink, where I’d thrown them 6 months ago with the intent of taking them to the recycle bin. Little did I know I’d need them for an art project!

My next step is to tear them up and re-form them into several canvases, probably using paper mache.  I want to use large enough pieces so that all of the textual information from the phonebooks is still fully legible.  Then I will be doing some illustrative paintings of antiquated phones on the “canvases.”

My biggest challenge with this project is time, but I am sure that the combination of my excitement about it and the fact that I am sick of stepping around the pile will get me motivated to find the time!

–Lea

Well, I’m leaping into the world of blogging with some trepidation, as I’m not sure whether I have anything particularly relevant or interesting to say.

The project I proposed for the Phone Book Mash Up consists of using a number of different phone books representing different segments of Portland. I plan to fuse the pages together and create Cornell boxes with objects connected to the particular book which has been made into a shadow box. I hope that I can paint a portrait of our community, and perhaps show how we connect to one another. 

So far, I have several specialty phone books, but am looking for more. If anyone knows of phone books, probably yellow pages, that gather together contact information for specific neighborhoods, ethnic communities, or anything else, please let me know. I can be reached at devineart1@mac.com.

Right now the project is living in my head, but as I come upon interesting items they are finding a waiting room together in my studio. Now, if the weather will just cool down so I can work out there, I can start the great experiment. This is going to be an interesting process for me as most of my work has been two dimensional collage that has just sort of revealed itself to me as I worked. Planning ahead and trying to live up to the vision in my head will be a new adventure.

I look forward to reading about the projects the other artists are working on as the time flies by.

The Phone Book MashUp was originally conceived by Laura Nestler PDX Community Manager of Yelp.com and enhanced by Adrienne Fritze found of Working Artists LLC.

How these two women found each other was through a networking event – the old kind of networking event. Laura was a presenter at a business conference geared toward women entrepreneurs, and Adrienne was one of the hundreds of attendees. The irony of that meeting is that both women are AVID online social networkers! Go figure…

After attending a panel presentation on ONLINE social networking where Laura was a panelist, Adrienne was intrigued by the business she represented, yelp.com, and when she had a moment she signed up on the consumer review site. Adrienne wrote her first review – of her own gallery, the Working Artists Gallery – and Laura was the first person to comment.

It was only a matter of days before they met again in person, and took Laura’s idea of using phone books in an art project turning it into THE PHONE BOOK MASH UP.

Laura’s job was then to bring in a couple of sponsors – (and we’ve the best!)Dry Soda, Crater Lake Vodka and Cascade Mountain Gin), and the top tier of reviewers on Yelp – the Upper Eschelon (dum dum dum). Adrienne was to bring in the artists (one of whom is your caterer Lisa Nelson of Café Mango Catering, AN ARTIST WITH FOOD!) and provide the kick-off location (welcome!).

And that brings you all here today.

The intention of this document is to explain the ideal unfolding of the next 90 days.

Let’s start with the artists. Here are the folks we’ve chosen to take us on a journey with them in the process of repurposing those barely-useful-to-us-anymore phone books into art.