ARS NOVA JUNE 2011

It's about time we get some experimental music up in here. 

The folks at Ars Nova are doing a show on June 13th, 2011 at the Maas Space: Henry Threadgill, Jeff Parker/Mike Reed.  

[ HERE'S AN MP3 to STREAM ]

HI5 Studio Progress Spring 2011

Looking into the control room.  Very exciting. 

For more info: Hi 5 Studio

Oh! Pears Variety Show, Friday and Saturday May 20-21

Stay tuned... this should be a great show!  Here's the Facebook Link.

Michael Mullin Will Haughery BFA Show

Michael Mullin and Will Haughery were in Ben's class at Tyler School of Art, and helped out in the early stages of renovations around the Maas Building a couple summers ago. From sandblasting, climbing obscenely tall ladders to crawling under floorboards to run water pipes, these guys have done it all.

... And they're really great artists!  Come see their combined BFA show this coming weekend.  Congrats Michael and Will!  Opens this Friday 6-9pm.

The guys, painting some dirty walls, in preparation for the show

THE DAWNING OF A NEW ERA

We've been pretty hard at work: hoping the work part of this will end, and the enjoyment of this yard will begin. This picture represents: the finishing of the stone path, 12 tons of dirt spread around the yard, the planting of a few bushes, the moving of a tree, and seeding grass seed.

The last loads of cobblestones from the secret ghetto cobblestone mine.

2 loads (6 tons each) of screened and tested topsoil. Bury the lead!

We moved Honeysuckle and Vibernum bushes: after finishing the stone path, this place started to come together and some changes needed to be made.  Rake the soil, and seed grass, add water, and... enjoy!  well, wait a month maybe and then enjoy...

We'll be watching this closely.  Do they make ultrasounds for grass?

We decided to move the Hawthorne tree to the spot where the Black Gum tree had been - and died this past winter.  The Hawthorne seems to inhabit this spot majestically.

Woop here it is.

Relaxing with Neighborhood Friends

After the last 5 weeks of extreme busy-ness, it's nice to chill out with some good folks from the neighborhood.  We really couldn't have picked a better group of people.

CLUB LYFESTILE: RITE OF SPRING (2011)

Audience

After Math

Class

Act

CLEARING SPACE

Concrete Patio: done

5th Side Warehouse: Tons of Crap moved.  It's reasonably clear

The Hi 5 Studio: We're finishing sheetrocking

Truckloads of Topsoil: delivered and spread

Piles of rubble, lead-laden soil, and mountains of trash: Out. Done. Thank you Kevin Duggan for your dumptruck!

Gardening: except for a few casualties, most of our trees and bushes have survived the winter / construction abuse.

Bob Beatty delivering a load of topsoil.  $14/ton for tested soil!  

We're dealing wth some serious wreckage around here.  We keep putting off  planting grass until further and further - we missed planting last fall because of too much going on and not enough good dirt... Now... May 1st is the date, hopefully!

An Exposed Aggregate Concrete Patio

Bam.  There it is.

Simple. Elegant. Affordable. Easy.  Ok, well, all those things are true except the last part. The backstory: After many conversations over materials (slate, flagstone pavers, etc) we settled on concrete as our material. It's really the most flexible option. And it's totally cheap. We actually started looking at sidewalks: They're kind of ubiquitous and you don't really notice them most of the time, but they're kind of cool-looking (at least the old ones are). They're modern, rectangular, sleek. We walked around taking pictures of patches of sidewalks we like.

The pic on the top right we liked best. Nearly white cement, and dark exposed aggregate.  It turns out that no concrete trucks in Philly will mix up white cement at any reasonable cost, so we decided to do it ourselves.  We borrowed a friend's cement mixer, and ordered deliveries of stone, sand and cement.  Again, it turned out that no place sold the combination of white sand and dark stone, so we had to get two separate deliveries. 

I think at this point we were glad that we haven't seeded grass yet.  It would have gotten destroyed.

For stuff like this we nearly always call on a hand from Victor Marin, our next-door neighbor.  When the project is big, he sometimes brings one of his many relatives. This time we had Victor's brother Jose Luis working with us. (Not to be confused with Victor's nephew Jose Luis)

A little help from our friendsl: BC Camplight, Rock n Roller extraordinaire shows up the first morning to move some heavy stuff.  He says he likes the workout. If I meet more people that say stuff like that, I'm going to start a free gym. Rock and Roll Concrete Aerobics. Just for the record, he did not make it to the 7am start on Sunday morning.

Turns out white cement happens to be double the cost of regular (grey) cement. So, we use 75% regular cement and white on just the last couple inches on top.

Victor, our resident concrete expert

To get the exposed aggregate look, you have to wash the top layer off while the cement is hardening.  Sponges proved to be the best tool for that.

We did it in 1/3s. By the last 3rd, we had it down. The first 1/3 is still a little milky. We got started late and ended up washing it in the dark.  We were too tired to get up at 10pm and sweep it again.  We'll get it looking all good soon. 

We had a little left over mix so we made a much-needed step to our house.

El Camino In The Yard

This is El Camino Real, the path that will eventually guide you through a thick jungle into wondrous world of The 5th Side (hopefully without too much trip & fall)  

Geometry is fun. Most of this slate and cobblestones were here, underneath the asphalt (see posting May 2010). So we're finally piecing this windy path together.  It's actually the most satisfying kind of work. It's like playing Tetris and lifting weights at the same time.  

More satisfying than pinochle and taxes? 

at some point perhaps halfway through, we ran out of cobblestones.  Luckily, within a short walk of our place, there are decaying properties that hold the history of Philadelphia streets in their piles of rubble. Absentee landlords sit on these places, refusing to sell or fix them up -  in the hopes that the developments in nearby Northern Liberties will make them rich when they can sell them to condo developers.  Until then, we have vacant, abandoned lots all around us that do nothing but collect trash.  

Well, as they say, one man's trash is another man's cobblestone walkway...