I took the day off of work to get some art done.. to work on these projects that have been in my head for a while. So far I’ve wasted the day away on the internet. When I finally convince myself it is time to work I feel near panicky at what to do first. Sometimes the pressure I put on myself to do something creative is entirely insurmountable.  What to do??

Friday night I was privileged to witness a spectacular event of Seattle underground and not so underground art. “The Belmont,” a large house on Capital Hill was about to be torn down to make way for the latest Seattle trend in condos. Everything I know about this event is second- possibly third-hand and obscured, so my information may be slightly askew, but it’s sort of fitting, in that way. The Belmont was apparently home to many artists throughout the years. Someone had the brilliant idea to turn this house into one last transient art installation. Seattle artists of all kinds lent their hands to transforming the house. Each room, each hallway, had a different artist’s work. To receive one of three hundred and thirty-three free tickets to attend the exclusive event you had to go to one certain place, ask for one certain person, at one certain time. Luckily, I had one certain (read, fantastic) friend to do that for me.

I arrived late in the evening, about 1 am, with 2 friends, Jess and Bryn. I was excited and awed, just standing outside the place. There were sandwich boards, ironically advertising condos, being placed in the street in front of the house. I attempted to take a few pictures from the outside of the house and realized it was just too much work to get a good photo with my flash. Especially, since every time the flash went off at least 10 people turned to stare. Always the self-conscious photographer, and not wanting to detract from the experience, I decided to turn off the flash. With 2 second exposures, in the dark, I was forced to hold the camera close to my chest to steady it enough to get a little less blur. I wasn’t able to look through the viewfinder and quickly realized this was a wonderful idea. I was camera happy in shoot-from-the-hip mode. My photos were random, blurry and surprising. What better way to document the transient art than that?

We ventured inside and I was surprised that the exclusive, ticketed party hosts did not even care to see our tickets. I showed mine to one guy smoking a cigarette at the door and he looked at me like, “Uh, what the hell do I care?” The crowd was a little unexpected. It was more like a big dirty frat overrun with hipsters than the art appreciating youth that I expected. Nonetheless, I let go of my “We don’t belong here” vibe and focused on the walls. I fully committed to my “shoot-from-the-hip” philosophy (or in my case, “shooting-from-the-chest”) and ended up taking almost 150 shots. It was tough to squelch my inner perfectionist. I could have documented every inch of the house, given enough time and light. The crowd was pushy and constantly moving. Taking the time to frame a shot would have been impossible anyway. I’ll share with you some of my favorites here. These guys took some more concise and sharp images if you are interested. Apparently, after we left, the party really got going with a performance by Seattle’s non-theater theater group Implied Violence and a movement out into the street for dancing, heckling and general misanthropy. Sorry I missed it.

[*thanks to zack for figuring out this photo thing... ]