Monday May 26, 2008 London

Go to the Tate Modern, do floors 3 & 5 it is very crowded again for the bank holiday. Lots of special fun events for the kids. I did just one event. I took the illegal audio tour. It consisted of listening to the artist Willem de Ridder taking you on a tour of the Tate. The video clip below is a sample I made by holding my camera next to the headphones. I figured nobody back home would believe how cool this was. Pointing out “secret” works of art. He would instruct you to stand in a certain spot and look in a certain direction. Thus pointing out a blob of plaster that looks like a butterfly. A flaw in the mudding of sheetrock is a sculpture that looks like a penis, etc. Looking for about the eleventh secret artwork he instructs you to go in a door marked “employees only” he says it’s ok this one time. I walk in and as I am coming in contact with employees the artist is reassuring me that it’s ok. Just tell them you are on the audio tour. The fourth employee Christopher Tom Lewis isn’t per swayed and ushers me out. He is one of the long-term Tate staff. A gallery supervisor, we talk for a while outside the employee door. I tell him about my gallery luck. He asked me to let him know if I show in London. I give him my cards and explain my trilogy. He said they looked like Hoppers. I tell him about seeing the show in Chicago a month ago seeing them in chronological order. I felt that my style sort of continued where his left off. His later work had more people in them. He said they had a Hopper show two years ago that was very successful. I ran into him again about five hours later. He said that he showed the cards to the head of the painting department who liked them and said they look like Hoppers. He was again adamant about letting him know about the galleries. I asked about donating a painting he said to email the director.