VENUS OF BURNING MAN
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The Logans were last mentioned in our April 27th, 2010 newsletter (click on "New" on our website to see again) the article ended with, "Pinch me..." They had just given us the Venus of Burning Man sculpture commission. It's been three months, it's done and here it is. |
 I'm writing this on the plane returning from Vail. They (Kent and his wife Vicki) have not seen this piece in person. We just installed it in their Scottsdale home a week ago Saturday. We had a large transparency of this image
mounted in an aluminum light box that punches up the clarity of the picture almost like high definition 3D. The Logans are among the top contemporary art collectors in the world. Kent can be a tough nut, sometimes crushingly decisive but I just knew this piece was going to be a slam dunk and it was so worth it to hand carry the image to him since he wouldn't see the actual piece till October/November. He had only seen the stainless steel box which we installed before they left for the summer. Thanks to Doug Vance at Metal Works who did a great job making it.
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I had drawn several ideas for this location. It was at Kent's urging that I went to a single figure from my Burning Man experience.
It's really an extension of the ongoing Box People
at Burning Man project that John Romero and
I do. The spoons reference Spork's dress.
Thanks to Bob Wilkenson who did the
machete fan.
Thanks to John Romero who took the
beautiful hero shot.
Thanks to Aaron Brown and his amazing
casting and finishing skills.
And thanks to Daniella our model who tuffed
it out through some grueling casting sessions.
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The Logans live in Vail near the top of a mountain with this view.
I've never been around work like this that wasn't in a museum. Names like Kiefer, Koons, Hirst, Richter and Warhol won't mean much if you don't know art history but they are at the top of the contemporary heap commanding vast sums at auction.
 The laughing figures are Yue Minjun. The neon text is Tracy Emin. The small figures on the right are Juan Munoz. The text is Christopher Wool and the round painting is Glen Brown. |
 The monumental bronze on the table is Thomas Shutte. The woman with the black hand is a Pia Stadtbaumer currently in a show at the Denver Art Museum.
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The portrait of Kent and Vicki is by Eric Fischl. This hyper-realistist sculpture is by Ron Muek. 
A Juan Munoz piece in the garden. They have super lush landscaping with lots of flowers. So different from the cactus and desert sauna here in Phoenix.
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Kent has ok'd my idea for the figures to go in the middle of this ring. There will be a dwarf-lady on the shoulders of her tall husband standing directly over a tunnel entrance. I believe the correct term is a small or little person but I'm not sure.
We've been smashing about five miles of barbed wired into a wood form for about a month. It's kind of like doing rammed earth.
It will be placed with a crane in the middle of the circular stone wall we're just finishing.
We call this kind of rock work, "blind mortar" or
"dry stack" because the mortar that holds it together is mostly invisible. |
REAL ESTATE
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We've got three new properties. |
539 W. Parkway is a single family fix and flip. We just listed it yesterday for $198,850. I'm not showing you an after shot because my partners forced me to work with an unreasonable landscape budget. |
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1307 W. 3rd is a buy and hold four-plex. That's Rick on the roof. We just started knocking down that wall today.
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| 2222 S. Rural are 20 two-bedroom apartments to buy and hope.
This is our biggest project so far. It's across the street from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Catholic Church where my wife, Rick's family and half of our kid's school (Tempe Prep Academy) seem to attend. Thanks to my mom, Sally Orlick, for loaning us the money to buy it. We're going to make a model out of one of the units. It's on Rural Road and has 36,000 cars go by each day. I guess the traffic is the good and bad news. We're going to rent them for $685/month. If you anticipate being homeless, give us a call and we can begin the complex process of an FBI background check which will include fingerprints but not a body cavity search. |
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