D.I.Y.
PHP: Just one last question: How did Time Out find out about the Tubisms?
KH: Oh, I’m glad you brought that up because of the marketing issue. Right before I was going to do the Tubisms project The Cue Foundation ran a seminar on how to write your own press release. I made one up and sent it out everywhere. Someone at the Arts Desk at Time Out gave it to the desk of “What’s Strange in the City”. He called me, and I got lucky that they ran it as a full page—which was great.
I’m now hoping to be in the “Sight/Site” section of the New York Times—they’re doing this series about public art around the city in the the Lens blog. They came out to the Grand Army Plaza site and loved it, but then they decided to feature the monument restoration and didn’t want to have two in the exact same location. So they’re coming back to my September 19th one. Of course with press nothing is ever real until it actually happens. [Editor’s note: Photos by Marilynn K. Yee of the Aberrant Sidewalk were published in the New York Times online on September 22nd and in in the print edition on September 23rd]
PHP: Just that fact that you have that kind of connection with people who are interested and are paying attention is fabulous.
KH: I definitely see my future as doing a big public project with the city.
PHP: Or perhaps Creative Time?
KH: I love them. They’ve just started that quadrennial on Governor’s Island.
PHP: It’s a great open space.
KH: It is. Right now it’s like a small ghost town. There was just this piece in the Times about how the Federal Government gave it to the city for a dollar with the caveat that there couldn’t be any commercial enterprise. So, it has to be this public place with things like art colonies.
PHP: Oh, Bloomberg will just fund it all at some point.
KH: If he would just quit running his own campaign that would be plenty of money.
PHP: (laughing) Exactly.
KH: The first time we did the sidewalk in Grand Army Plaza outside the Brooklyn Library and there was someone also in a white jacket who was passing out Bloomberg pamphlets. So people started asking “Are you guys out here for Bloomberg?” and making comments like “The sidewalk’s messed up because Bloomberg is running for a third term. (Laughing) It’s all his fault.”
