Creating The Circle
The series of full size cartoons was created on the ground to which end the enormous drawing boards had to be built that turn every room of the very sizable house into a working art studio.
Alexey Steele recounts: “When the contractor on the projects Michael Marechal with whom later we became very close friends came up with an idea of using a cherry picker he approached me one day with this conspirator’s smile ever-present when he’s up to something and asked: “Are you afraid of heights by any chance?” to which I replied: “Oh, well, kinda yeah..” to which he replied with enthusiastic conviction of science researcher: “Great. You have a perfect chance to get it over with.” It didn’t take me long to realize the enormous technical significance of this fabulous brave new world art tool which would allow me to constantly control the emerging image from the ground as opposite to fixed scaffoldings when seeing it for the first time from a proper distance is possible only when the scaffoldings are removed and it a bit too late to do anything about it.
The machine weighs almost 8 tons. In order to bring it inside the house we had to reinforce the entire floor with about 100 of 10” beams covered with 3/4” plywood, but not before the Egyptian scale dirt ramp was built all the way from the access road to the hill and into a house.
The machine weighs almost 8 tons. In order to bring it inside the house we had to reinforce the entire floor with about 100 of 10” beams covered with 3/4” plywood, but not before the Egyptian scale dirt ramp was built all the way from the access roFirst ascend was pretty hair-raising with every shake making me literally freeze and just want to lay down on the floor of the basket, it took me about 45 minutes to get all the way up, and I don’t even want to tell what I felt looking down. Then it became sort of easier and to the point that I would do the whole run at full speed, none stop including intricate navigation between heavy beams under the ceiling. At some nights I’d do it with authentically Russian size vodka shot in hand and would take friends on a joy ride. Boooy what a fun we had!”
