A generous grant from the Quimby Foundation and the curatorial support of Daniel Fuller, director of the ICA @ Maine College of Art made phase 1 of the renovations possible.
After gutting the interior of the bus, it became clear that we would have to move the object from Portland to Sanford, Maine, where a team of welders would help us remove the windows, cut the bus in half, raise the roof thirty inches, weld the whole thing together, and sheath the entire object in steel.
At this First Friday event in June of 2012, Kim Charles Kay gave a lecture on the vast array of people and groups who took it upon themselves to build object to take on the road like truck houses and tiny homes. Lisi Raskin was a barker to get people into the bus while David Barr played the harmonica on the corner of Main Street to entice visitors.
Nikolai Mahesh Noel and Matthew Pendleton Shelton met at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they were candidates in the Painting and Printmaking MFA program. In 2011, they collaborated on a series of drawings exploring power--both the way it exists and the way it is perceived--and their individual subject positions. Each artist tried to occupy an essentialized version of himself through the drawing process. Matt amped up his whiteness, Nikolai projected an impulsive resistance, enacting the roles of the Oppressor and the Oppressed.
From August 2 through August 9 2012, Noel and Shelton were invited by MOTORPARK to resume their collaboration at the ICA @ the Maine College of Art. On First Friday in August outside of the ICA, each artist produced 100 drawings of the other. In this this exercise, the artists use the image of the other in an effort to locate and see themselves, like a sonar signal.
During this week, the collaboration included occupying the ICA front window where they worked on a large-scale collaborative drawing and giving a performance titled "Reparations Points and Honky Jokes," followed by a lecture on their collaboration.
Started in 2012, MOTORPARK is a collaboration between artists Kim Charles Kay & Lisi Raskin. This 1996 Blue-Bird school bus has been transformed into a hub, a workshop, a think-tank on wheels.
During phase 2 of the build out, we'll be working on the interior of the bus by laying a wood floor, installing a wood burning stove, and installing a kitchen. We'll be making the bus into a warm and inviting space for the range of projects that we will be hosting in Louisville, KY in the summer of 2015. Follow us for updates, insights, and directions that will show you how to find us next.
Our show at the ICA was an opportunity to challenge the format of the exhibition as something static by providing a platform for other artists who collaborations were inspiring to us in our own attempts to collaborate. In the instance of the Video Lounge, we used the bus seats as seating for a screening room that aired works by The Art Department, http://www.theartdepartment.me/, Laleh Khorramian, and Cary Cronenwett. We also screened the 2012 Presidential debates for the students at MeCA.
In the middle gallery at the ICA we showed a variety of improvised sculptures that we crafted from bus parts and other generated ephemera. Additionally, we installed CONSTELLATIONS & ARCHIPELAGOS, a series of collaborative artworks by Nikolai Mahesh Noel and Matthew Pendleton Shelton.