Monthly Archives: June 2019

Have a Great Weekend

Saturday is a day for the next Triffid Ranch open house, and you can tell from the sound of shoveling, hammering, occasional blasting, and a seemingly endless string of profanity from languages probably not of this planet and maybe not from this reality level. One of these days, I’m going to take a break just to develop a safe, effective, and cost-effective vaccine for sleep.

The Aftermath: 500x Gallery Hot & Sweaty 2019

All is said and done. The Hot & Sweaty 2019 open show at the 500x Gallery was a success on two levels. Firstly, the very enthusiastic response to the two enclosures put on display, particularly during the show opening, suggests that a deep dive into research on science art shows and exhibitions is something that needs to be done this summer. At the very least, the Hot & Sweaty proved that carnivore enclosures on display need two cards: one on the construction, and one on the natural history of the plant on display. I’m not ready to manage or curate a separate exhibition of science and engineering art, but it may be time to track down somebody who is.

And the other level? Something about the 500x was very encouraging to both of the plants on display. I’m used to Nepenthes ampullaria going through sudden growth spurts with little to no warning, but the Cephalotus pitchers on display in Antarctica in Decline just exploded. I don’t know if it was due to additional light in the new gallery, increased carbon dioxide, or the simple fact that Cephalotus are attention hounds and simply got their fill, but I’m going to have to try this again.

Have a Great Weekend

For the first time in a while, this weekend isn’t filled with shows and events, but appearances are deceiving. This is the weekend necessary to finish up a whole slew of projects in anticipation for the June Triffid Ranch open house on June 29, and the Hot & Sweaty show at the 500x Gallery (complete with two enclosures to fill the need for gonzo science art) ends Sunday. If you see me on the street and want to know my ears are packed with plastic dust, now you have an explanation.

Enclosures: “Eocene Survivors” (2015)

Description: An intriguing thought experiment on being able to recognize very ancient traces of extraterrestrial life and civilizations involves what is known as the “Silurian hypothesis,” which involves how to identify traces of industrial civilizations millions of years in Earth’s past. If, and this is definitely an “if,” terrestrial life had developed sentience millions of years before humanity, traces of these sentients’ technology and industry may not be recognizable as such, depending upon both geological metamorphosis and distortion and decomposition of metals and other artificial components. Another aspect is that, thanks to constant erosion of Earth’s surface and plate tectonics raising new mountains and plateaus, what were prime locations for cities during the Cretaceous period (145 million years BCE to 65 million years BCE) could have eroded to dust or been subducted into Earth’s mantle, destroying them forever. However, and this is another “if,” if an advanced civilization had existed on Earth in the distant past, its artifacts and relics  may still be preserved in a recognizable form, but were preserved in sedimentary strata currently covered with lava flows, buried under glaciers, or are otherwise inaccessible at this time.

Dimensions (height/diameter): 25 1/2″ x 14 1/2″ (64.77 cm x 36.83 cm) diameter

Plant: Cephalotus follicularis

Construction: Acrylic. Resin, stone, glass, horn

Price: Sold

Shirt Price: Sold

Photo by Allison David

The Aftermath: Swizzle’s Waipuna Tiki Flea 2019

Hot, humid, and sticky. All three apply over most of Texas all year around, but it’s particularly relevant in Dallas in June. This changes rapidly in July, when humidity drops like a rock after the sun comes up and the south wind starts up, but we’re not yet to July. Combine that with an impending storm front that concentrated that heat and humidity, and Dallas on June 15 was, if you squinted hard, an analogue for Honolulu. What this meant was that it was an absolutely perfect day for the Swizzle’s Waipuna Tiki Flea show at the Industry Alley Bar just south of downtown, and nobody involved was going to let a little thing like geography get in the way of the fun.

As part of Dallas Tiki Week, the Tiki Flea is now a regular and much-anticipated event, and dragging out plants to next year’s show is a given. In the interim, Swizzle’s hosts an annual holiday gift show in December, and that’s where I expect things are going to get good and weird.

The Aftermath: 500x Gallery Hot & Sweaty 2019 Open Show

After years of little weekend shows and events, the Texas Triffid Ranch has arrived: enclosures exhibiting in an established gallery. The 500x Hot & Sweaty open show, at one of Dallas’s most famous galleries, had a wide variety of submitted art in different media and formats, but I was confident at the beginning that it probably wouldn’t have any science art or science-inspired art. At the Hot & Sweaty opening on June 8, not only did that make the two submitted enclosures unique, but the response suggests a combination of art show and museum exhibition, with either interactive displays or live provosts to explain the science side of displays for those unfamiliar with the background.

Hot & Sweaty 2019 ends on June 23, but don’t let that stop you from coming out during the week and weekend. The 500x is open on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5:00, and open during the week by appointment. If you’ve wanted to view a Triffid Ranch enclosure but haven’t been able to make an open house, here’s your chance.

Have a Great Weekend

Yet another busy weekend, what with the Swizzle’s Waipuna Tiki Flea at Industry Alley Bar just south of downtown Dallas on Saturday. And now a bit of underappreciated music from 30 years ago, before whiner rock took over everything.

The Aftermath: Garland Urban Flea – June

 The plan for the last year was to set up a tent at the first-ever outdoor Triffid Ranch show, and that plan also involved setting up at the Garland Urban Flea in downtown Garland, Texas. Part of the reason was because it was just down the road from the gallery, and part was because the Garland downtown with which I had been familiar in the early 1990s had changed beyond recognition. The roads were paved, the shops revived, and the central park had just finished a much-needed and very much appreciated renovation. Combine that with decent rents for vintage stores and unique restaurants, and every event in the park found an enthusiastic audience. The Garland Urban Flea was just one event, scheduled on the second Saturday of every month, but it seemed to be a perfect one with which to try conducting an outdoor show.

 Anybody regularly attending or vending at outdoor shows will tell you that the weather can go sideways very quickly, especially in Texas, and that was getting to be an ongoing joke with previous attempts to set up at the Garland Urban Flea. First time: pouring rain. The next time, the previous day’s temperatures promised a beautiful event, and then a cold front dropped temperatures to the edge of freezing, making too much of a risk to the plants. The next show that didn’t conflict with other events was in May, where the rain started up around 2 in the morning and didn’t let up until about the time the Urban Flea was expected to pack up. Oh, and the makeup rain day? Memorial Day Weekend, right after I’d scheduled another show. And so it goes.

 As it turned out, everything worked out. The next Garland Urban Flea ran on June 8, and the weather was GLORIOUS. Slight breezes, sunny but cool enough that everyone wanted to get out and do something before the summer heat hit, and the tent location was directly under two live oak trees, which gave extra shade all day. Combine that with cool neighbors and curious and excited attendees, and it was a great debut at the Urban Flea. Even breakdown was easy. It may be a few months until the next time the tent goes up (the Garland Urban Flea doesn’t run in August because of the heat, and July and September are just a little too warm for the plants), but October and November are perfectly reasonable if the weather holds.

 And why the emphasis on the weather? Well, despite having a tent with sides, there’s only so much rain that a typical pop-up tent can deflect, and that’s not counting winds that tend to turn show tents into parachutes. The very next day, the Dallas area was hit with a massive rainstorm with 70mph winds, which tore trees apart, ripped off roofs, and cut power for most of the city and surrounding suburbs for days. Had that storm hit 24 hours earlier, everything would have been a total loss: what the rain and wind wouldn’t have destroyed directly would have been smashed when a branch from one of those shading live oaks came down. And now you know why most Triffid Ranch shows are indoors.

Have a Great Weekend

This weekend is busy: between the Garland Urban Flea on Saturday morning and the 500x Hot & Sweaty gallery exhibition on Saturday night, as well as a photoshoot by Dallas photographer Allison David, there might be enough time to mow the lawn. That last is a priority: I’m not saying it’s overgrown, but the neighbors are complaining about the pandas.

State of the Gallery: June 2019

 It’s hard to believe what’s changed with the Triffid Ranch since 2015: it was four years ago this month that wandering through an ArtWalk at Valley View Center meant coming across a freshly vacated space at the dying mall that looked like a perfect place to start a carnivorous plant gallery, and everything snowballed from there. Four years of late nights, early mornings, mad dashes to the space after the Day Job was done, road trips for plants or gear, massive remodelings and rearrangings, and it’s all been worth the effort. The gallery isn’t absolutely perfect (I certainly wouldn’t complain about another 1000 square feet for growing area and a loading dock), but compared to where it started, it’s getting there.

The irony of the situation is that getting word out about the gallery requires leaving it. For all of the noises about online promotion and publicity, people have had nearly a quarter-century to get used to ignoring online ads, and nothing beats getting out for shows and events and letting them see what makes the Triffid Ranch unique. The plan all along was for the gallery to act as a base for shows throughout the area and the state, but who had any idea that things were going to get so busy this year?

As for those shows, things go fast and furious in June. The last Garland Urban Flea in downtown Garland, Texas was flooded out, and the makeup day was held at the same time we were already scheduled for an event in Denton. (Let us not talk about the event in Denton: there’s a big difference between an actual music festival and a gaggle of hipsters who decide “Let’s put on a show!”) The Urban Flea is getting back onto its normal schedule, though, with this month’s event on June 8 from 9:00 to 4:30, right in the middle of downtown Garland. And speaking as a proud resident for the last near-decade, if your sole impressions of Garland come either from passing through in the 1980s or that quip in the movie Zombieland, I think you’ll be nicely surprised. (As always, with any outdoor show, serious weather may delay or shut down the whole thing. The good news is that as of June 4, the Dallas area gets a lot of rain before and after, but Saturday should be absolutely beautiful. As always, though, we’ll see.)

In unorthodox events, right after packing up everything at the Garland Urban Flea, it’s time to head back to old stomping grounds in Dallas’s Exposition Park. The 500x Gallery on Exposition Avenue, on the approach to the north entrance to Fair Park, just celebrated its 40th anniversary, and its Hot & Sweaty show every year is famous for its opening to anybody willing to drag art through the front door at the scheduled times. While the show runs every day from 12 noon to 5:00 until June 24, the opening on June 8 runs from 7:00 to 10:00, meaning that it’s a perfect opportunity to come by and view two sample enclosures for those who haven’t had the opportunity to come by the gallery. Besides, speaking as a resident of Exposition Park in the early 1990s, it’s always good to get back to the neighborhood.

(And the work keeps coming, by the way: after the 500x opening, it’s back to the gallery to finish up a slew of commissioned works, and to allow official Triffid Ranch photographer Allison David to get good photos of the current enclosures for a portfolio going out for the official fourth anniversary in September. To steal from the famed comics artist Matt Howarth, it may stop, but it never ends.)

The weekend after this gets even more interesting, as it’s time to go back to the Swizzle’s Tiki Lounge in Industry Alley Bar just south of downtown Dallas for the Swizzle’s Waipuna Tiki Flea on June 15. Last year’s show was unexpectedly show by comparison, as I was told by organizers and attendees alike, probably due to the cold drizzle running all day and most of the night. This year, there’s  no excuse, weather-wise.

After that, it’s time to take a break for one weekend, if only to mow the lawn and brush the cats. That breath-catching is in order to finish up everything for the next Triffid Ranch open house on June 29 from 6:00 to whenever we kick out the last people. If you’ve been out already, you already know the drill, but for those popping into Dallas for work or fun before the heat really kicks in, this is the time to see the plants in air-conditioned comfort among fellow carnivorous plant enthusiasts.

Oh, and before I forget, one extra bit of good news. One of the many pleasures of this last May’s Texas Frightmare Weekend (and we’re already gearing up for the 2020 show) was running into Bunny Voodoo of Blood Over Texas in Austin, and Bunny had the particulars on this coming November’s Horror For the Holidays show. It’s still running the weekend before Thanksgiving, but because of its increasing number of vendors and attendees, it’s moving from Come and Take It Live to the Travis County Expo Center. That means that Horror for the Holidays runs for both Saturday and Sunday, this year, meaning both that attendees have more flexibility with their schedules and we vendors don’t have to set up and tear down just in one day. This means that you can expect a lot more surprises this November, but you’ll have to wait until then to find out what they are. This also means that the Triffid Ranch is moving further out of Dallas proper: between this and the Oddities & Curiosities Expo in August, this marks two shows per year in Austin, with plans to move to Houston and San Antonio as soon as venues and opportunities allow.

And on the subject of August, the Triffid Ranch will go a little quiet in July, partly because of the heat and partly because of the need for new enclosures after this sort of June. However, it’s going to be busy from the beginning of August all the way to the end of the year, so keep checking the event calendar. It’s going to fill up: mark my words.