Selling...

Heading down I-275 on a Saturday morning, we crossed the Howard Frankland bridge towards Pinellas County, hauling the Airstream trailer behind. A couple gallons later, we arrived at downtown St. Petersburg, to peddle our artists’ books as outsiders during the annual Triathlon at the Vinoy Park, a venue sure to bring people traffic. Since many at the event would be obviously preoccupied with athletic things, we focused on the spectators. My first encounter was with a little woman named Clarice. She was there to watch her grandson. Clarice said she never went to museums, but she collected figurines and her walls weren’t covered with any art, but with photos of her 13 children and their children. She liked to line them up in staggered grids of 13 by 13. After she browsed a while, I showed her Judy Gelles’ Florida Family Portraits, a book containing portraits and photos of the author’s family taken every year for 20 years.
Ah,” she said, “I wish I was able to do that.”
I asked her what she meant.
“I wish I was able to get everybody together, long enough to capture it. I’m stuck getting individual photos sent to me in cards and I have to line them up next to each other. I hate all those spaces between.”
After minutes of looking, she came back to it and bought it.
I sold about 12 different books that day. I enjoyed being repeatedly surprised by seeing who lingered over what and which books were more saleable than I first expected.
-- time traveling Moving Thought bookmobile participant

Anticipation...

I have never experienced such a thrill as the Moving Thought Book Mobile! Touring around the city of Tampa in the 31' Airstream trailer brought me back to the days of my childhood, camping and touring, not to mention a nostalgia for those elementary school days as I and all the other 3rd graders anxiously awaited the arrival of the book mobile. Seeing the sea of people proudly create their very own artist’s book was well worth the long, hot, late spring days of Florida. Bringing art culture to an
audience who would otherwise never be exposed to it was a privilege that not many are able to say they have had. -- time traveling "Moving Thought" project participant.
* Arthouse opening, USF, School of Fine Art & Art History, Friday March 28
Saturday March 29th -- [no venue]
Sunday March 30th -- [no venue]
* Friday April 4th - "All Power to the Imagination" conference, New College, Sarasota,
* Saturday, April 5th - Flight 19 artists' space during the "Loud Art" exhibition (bookmaking workshop: "100 Books for 100 People," ongoing)
* Sunday April 6th - Safety Harbor Public Library
* Friday April 11th -- ["Neighborhood Watch" screening series in Seminole Heights]
* Saturday April 12th -- ["Neighborhood Watch" screening series in Seminole Heights] Sunday April 13th -- [no venue]
* Hillsborough Community College for the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image: Friday, April 18 and Saturday, April 19th -- [no venue; Flight 19? visiting speaker from Mobilivre project]
* Sunday, April 20th -- Hillsborough Community College for the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image (cyanotype workshop)
* April 25th - "Laminate Your Scrapbook!" - "Mobile Thought" trailer installed at CAM, opens 7-9pm

A mobile artists’ bookstore and experimental laboratory...

…rolling through Tampa Bay like a stormcloud in April. Like Billy Pilgrim, we imagine that we have done this all before. We need only to recollect this great creative adventure. What happened? What do we remember? It was a brilliant sunny weekend day, shining on the parking lot at Publix as the “Moving Thought” vehicle pulled up. A mob of screaming kids rushed inside, nearly filling the Airstream with a squirming, squealing tangle of excited humanity. They were there from the Seminole Heights community arts workshop, come to make books. When the kids realized the workshop was outside, the trailer emptied as quickly as it had filled. Adults, their parents, stood by shaking their heads and smiling. With this energized crowd, “100 Books for 100 People” – our announced goal, looked as if it might be achieved this very afternoon.
P.S. A great site, another "trip" is -- Les Sentiers de l’Utopie | Paths Through Utopia A 7 month journey through Europe in search of Utopian ways of living http://www.utopias.eu/paths/

Airstream Pics

Trailer Dreams…

Now we are well into our "Moving Thought" artists' bookmobile project, with our first book selections made, and some red-hot venues lined up (see below). But I want to recall the beginning moments of this scheme when I spoke with Irineo Cabreros, USF studio manager, about my dreams of living in a trailer, of running a gallery in a trailer. It’s an old artistical dream, really, from Wallace Berman’s Larkspur Gallery on a houseboat, to numerous contemporary art fair projects around nomadism and its technology.
These ideas seemed especially appropriate to Florida, where many a moss-encrusted trailer can be spied in shady glades, signs of a life lived on the edge of the grid. Irineo was talking to Bates RV, whose owner was apparently burying Airstreams in the ground as part of a monument of some kind. This seemed very strange, but intriguing. Irineo hoped to procure one of these trailers slated for the project for us to use as a traveling exhibition venue. In this he failed… the Airstream was buried. “Did you see it in the paper?” he asked one morning. I was dejected, and missed the notice.
Meanwhile, I contacted the Mobilivre project group at the suggestion of electronic media professor Anat Pollack. This project circulated artists’ books and zines for several years inside a remodeled Airstream trailer. It seemed we might be able to borrow their trailer for our project – an enticing prospect. Yet the logistics of moving it from New Jersey to Florida and back seemed daunting, and the group did not stay in contact.
Someone tipped me to the 2008 Florida RV Supershow at the State Fairgrounds, and I caught it on the last day. I brought my folding bicycle to wander amidst more RVs laid out and open than I’d ever seen in my life, hoping to find a dealer who would warm to our project and loan us a vehicle. Bates RV was all over that show, petitioning to save something called the “Airstream Ranch” from closure by public officials. I zipped up to the main Bates setup on my Dahon, and caught the ear of Mike Brucker. He works sales for Bates RV, put two kids through USF, and warmed to the notion of using one of their Airstreams for the “Moving Thought” project. Mike introduced me to Frank Bates, who, with mere hours before this major expo closed, said he thought it could be done…

Moving Thought and the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image

On Tuesday February 5th, Lauren and I went to Hillsborough Community College to interest in the art department about hosting Moving Thought. We first met with Suzanne Camp-Crosby who seemed interested in the project but recommended that we talk to David Audet. David Audet is the director of the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image, a film festival that is now going into its 6th year. We were lucky to find that Mr. Audet was on campus and we were kindly escorted to meet him. It had turned out that Audet had been contacted by Shane Hoffman, and was somewhat familiar with the Moving Thought Project. The three of us sat in the HCC cafeteria to discuss what could happen if Moving Thought were to become part of the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image. We discussed the possibilities bookmaking/printmaking workshops that occur on the HCC Campus. Audet suggested that Tracy Midulla-Reller might be interested in helping us set something up for HCC students. There was also talk of projecting video on and around the Moving Thought Vehicle. As we discussed the potential of our visit it was more and more clear that Moving Thought would be a perfect fit for the film festival, and tentative plans were made to include our mobile library on Thursday, April 17th and Saturday April 19th. The festival opens on the April 17th. During Audet would like us to perform activities designed more for the HCC students, and we will then continue with our project that evening in a manner that will highlight our time based media. We would be expected to return to HCC on the following Saturday to continue peddling our wares. Audet wants us to come on Saturday because that is when the general public is more likely to come; he said that Friday is a slow day at campus and would be less profitable. He also mentioned that he wouldn’t have a problem with us selling some sort of concessions. If we want to be part of the project we need to provide a detailed project description by the end of the month. I think that’s all for right now. I will follow up with Audet next week.

Jim Reiman

Moving Thought

"Moving Thought," the USF Fine Arts program bookmobile, is set to
roll out to selected locations throughout the Tampa Bay area in April
of this year. The 31-foot classic 1974 Airstream will be stuffed with
artists' books from Printed Matter, the New York non-profit store.