Happy Monday Update

Happy Monday to all who read this! (or any day of the week if You are reading this not on a Monday)

This is a quick update of what has happened in the past few days.

First off, I forgot to mention in the last post that last Sunday The Photo Palace Bus ventured out into the public and was introduced to the art world at  Watsonville,  CA.  There is a wonderful show of modern alternative photographic work currently on exhibit at Pajaro Valley Arts Council in which Ryan and I have a few pieces.  The reception was warm and many excited photo artists came through to take a look at the progress.  Unfortunately at that point the darkroom was not at all done so we had to play the 'imagine this' game.  Luckily artists are usually good at that game.  A couple of the images from that outing can be seen on our Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/PhotoPalaceBus.

Tuesday after that Photo Palace was seen in the back of the art building at San Jose State University.  Driving up the main street in San Jose I took this picture of City Hall complex.  It was built while I was attending SJSU and I even did a little documentary work for the city San Jose during the construction. I think it's a nice looking building, but it definitely looks better through the front window of a school bus.

Only in my wildest dreams, while going to this building daily for three years, did I ever imagine parking the Darkroom Bus in the back parking lot! 

The student art shows at SJSU have their receptions starting at 6pm on Tuesdays and this was the end-of-semester week so all the galleries were occupied by group shows, which makes for a massive influx of people.  We had a good time and a few of my old professors stopped by to say hi.
On the drive back I got my first taste at driving the bus at night and had to pull over to check if all our lights are in working order.  They are indeed and this is what we look like from the rear.

The Photo Palace Bus is now parked at a very beautiful spot where work continues.  Ryan's friends' land is not too far away and there is plenty of parking next to a big beautiful barn seen behind me in this reflection image.

Since we have been here we finally started the darkroom portion of the bus and it's been coming along nicely.
Against all odds we decided to put a standard plastic darkroom sink into our little space - the whole darkroom had to be pretty much designed around this thing - it's really the smallest possible sink for a regular stationary darkroom, but inside a school bus it quickly moves up to being almost the biggest possible. We even had to make a separate small sink to house the print washers (that's the small blue sink hiding behind the big black one in this image.

Then we moved to the right and constructed custom-made print drying racks (Ryan did a great job making the frames from recycled redwood, I wish I had a better picture of them alone, but You'll just have to come on the Bus and see for Yourself).

To the right of the racks will be two counters (wet and dry). The fame for the dry counter can be seen taking shape  above.  Today frames for enlarging stations will be finished.   Here is a shot of the first station in two stages of construction - frame only and then with cubbyholes and compartments that will house lenses, paper, dodging tools, etc.

Well, it's time to return to the Bus and get some work done.

Have a great and productive week everyone! 

AO