All Seeing Eyes, Triangles and Pyramid Dudes Part3

It was never a conscious decision that put me in the position that I’m in. I’m speaking about the lack of anonymity I have around my work and identity. There was definitely a time though, where I realised the game was up in my city as far as hiding, it’s just too much of a village.

There’s a lot that has happened between the point I did my first interviews without hiding my face and the point I ended up working from a very conspicuous studio space on one of Auckland’s main roads. With a really large plate glass shop window facing the street, people could walk or drive past and see me at work in my space. Initially I intended to run it as a small art gallery, in fact, I did show a few artists during the first year. Eventually though, I made two realisations; It was costing me money I didn’t have to put on the shows and it required being open and running as a functioning gallery – open to the public during the regular hours. This restricted my freedom in a way I couldn’t work with at that time. What I did really enjoy was working on illustration and design in that space although at time it felt like being in a fishbowl.

One day I decided to use the window in a different way, as a piece of art whilst also creating a bit more privacy. The idea was pretty much a play on the whole ‘being watched’ feeling of working in a fishbowl, married with the ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Illuminati’ concepts. I called this piece ‘Watching You’. It was made with a combination of sign-writers vinyl, which covered the entire window space with a small triangle cut out at the centre. Perched behind I stood a TV on a pile of old crates playing a DVD of an animated eye on loop. The clip was only made from 5 static images but would blink and look left and right. The table was turned so to speak and now I was looking back out at the world.

Public reaction was pretty funny, I wish I had made audio or video recordings of people outside, especially the girls from the local high school. They would scream and laugh as the eye looked about. Seeing as my studio was now completely concealed, many people would talk about it without realising I was there eavesdropping. I heard some ridiculous comments and even the odd argument. One day two guys arguing decided to knock and just ask me what was going on in my space. I answered ‘This is the headquarters for the Axis of Evil. Here we are busy making all societies ills a reality. We keep the poor impoverished while making the wealthy richer.” Needless to say they didn’t have much of an answer for that.

There was definitely someone that really objected to the animation in my window. Every day there was a huge glob of mucus dried in the centre of the triangle that I would have to scrub off. For quite a while I assumed it was either someone that didn’t like me personally or more likely someone that objected to the use of that symbol. I also wondered if it was as trivial as just being an obvious target for spit and nothing else.
One day I was working away and I heard someone gathering up a good bit of phlegm for the spitting. I quickly ran out the front door and saw a local ‘street worker’ lady spitting right at the window. She walked off muttering and talking to herself. She’s a regular character around my area and mad as a hatter so nothing needed to be said. I actually saw her doing it again a few days later as I drove past the front of my space. It was definitely her spit that I was cleaning off every day.

I was working one afternoon and I heard her muttering outside and then the sound of her writing with something on the window. I watched from the inside for a second and realised she was tagging with lipstick, rubbing things out, adding new things, basically just having a little jam on my window. It didn’t bother me, I grabbed my camera and watched her for a while and took some photos. We never spoke, she was in that crazy zone where I was just transparent as glass or pretty much non-existent.

I saw her on another occasion with her hand and face pressed up against the eye as if it was speaking to her directly. I think it was telling her to start tagging because within a week she started getting up around the area with ‘Jesus Christ’ tags. She also expanded her variety of names as she began to proliferate more and more. Her other names are ‘Moses’, ‘King David’ ‘Save’ and ‘Chantelle Rocks’ amongst other things. I’m not sure how the last one fits with the other religious references but hey, this is a somewhat special character. She divides her time between pulling $10 tricks on K’Rd and spreading the word of god with graffiti.

A week ago I saw her run into peak hour traffic, narrowly missed by two cars to thrust her hands onto a motorcyclist stopped at the lights, praying and appearing to ‘save’ him. He completely ignored her, just looking forward and pretending she wasn’t there. It was magic.

To be continued