This is the first in a series of case studies I will be running through my Carwash. If you are already familiar with this stuff, skip it, But if you want a little window into the process, keep reading!
In July of 2007, I was approached by Aaron Rose to help design an exhibition he was putting together for Nike. We met up at our usual spot, and he showed me two books from the 1970s. One was a tattered xerox pile of sheets entitled Build Your Own Living Structures and the other was Eye Love You, a book of photographs by the Dutch photographer Ed Van Der Elsken.
These two books would set the tone for our project. There were hippies building their own houses and going off the grid, but there was also an intense underlying tremor happening at that time in the 1970s. This duality is what Aaron asked me to represent graphically. There was also a shoe launch for a Nike shoe that this exhibition would have to incorporate, and a steep timeline.
We took the idea behind Build Your Own Living Structures and built, with our hands, a huge structure packed with graphics, art, 70’s nike ads, memorbilia from the beginnings of Nike and of course shoes. The shoes were exact re-releases of the original Nike running shoes from the 1970’s.
In the end, I designed somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 graphic panels for the structure. It stands as one of my all time favorite projects and it truly tested my limits physically and mentally. The show ended up traveling and expanding with each move. We tore it all down and built it again four times. We went to New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Miami.
A lot of really great artists created pieces for the show: Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Tracy Nakayama, Scott Campbell, Jesse Spears, Steven Harrington, Kime Buzzelli, Mike Pare, eRock, Jo Ratcliff and Alexis Ross. We also ended up doing photo shoots with Dan Monick and Jeaneen Lund, who managed to tranport us to the 70’s with their photos.
Many 70’s cultural references worked their way into the show: Blue Ribbon Sports, Steve Prefontaine, Eros Magazine, Women’s Lib, The Hell’s Angels, Marquee Moon, The Clash, The American Flag, Playboy, Herb Lubalin, Grandma’s Kitchen Wallpaper, the Pirelli Calendar, What’s Happening, Xanadu, Tommy, Bill Bowerman’s Waffle Iron, Female Facial Hair, The Computer, The Joy of Sex, Tube Sox, Tie-Dye, a Tee-Pee, The Nike Cortez… I think you get the idea.
Each Re-Run event also featured amazing music. The Boredoms, Soiled Mattress and the Springs, Cat Power, Deerhunter, Ghostface Killah, Car Clutch, Gang Gang Dance and White Williams all played. In the beginning Nike was going to book seventies artists to play the different shows. At one point Steve Miller band was on the table but he backed out!
For more photos of Re-Run, check out my flickr set.
