Halloween A
16mm loop , 42 second cycle, 3 hours, 1996
Margaret and I had just taken possession of our first house on Argyle Street in Regina in the middle of October of 1996. While we'd not move in until December, we were in it every day, refinishing floors, painting walls, etc. Artist Gerri Ann Siwek owns the house across the street and she had been decorating the front of her house for days leading up to Halloween (at this point I should note that when I was around the age 8, I told a church minister I that Halloween was a religious holiday. While he corrected me, it continues to be the only day in the year that I hold sacred. So when it looked like Gerri Ann was going to be the highlight of our block, my competitive gene kicked in. Even though our house was pretty much empty, I set up a 16mm film projector, cut together some old footage, and ran a film loop onto cloth in the large front window. Every kid stopped and we were the talk of the block. It only proves that it is easy to win a competition when you don't tell your opponents that you are competing.
The primary image I used was jack-o-lantern footage shot as part of Crave in 1994. I'd been playing with the footage on the optical printer, enlarging it to 16mm, but had too many problems so had abandoned the creation of a finished film project for it. Lacking a digital camera or even a video camera, the one 35mm still (above) is all the documentation I have for this event.