Eve Fowler: Hi, I'm Eve Fowler.
A Spectacle and Nothing Strange is a public art piece that I made in Los Angeles in 2011 through 2012, and I'm continuing to work on it in various ways. The text is from Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and How to Write.
I took the text and I worked with it in my studio and I made pieces on cardboard with spray paint because that was what was around the studio and that was what I was finding outside the studio. My studio is downtown. And so when I drove to the studio every day, I would drive by Colby Posters, you know, those very fluorescent Day-Glo posters. They're stapled to telephone poles so that when you're stopped in your car you look at them. So after driving by those posters for a while I thought, "Oh, it'd be really interesting to have this language out in public so people that are, like, waiting for the bus or people that are just standing around on the street or driving by get to experience this language, because I think it's really pleasurable."
There's a hint of alienation in some of that language, you know? To me it sort of speaks to any "other," but I think most people feel "other" in some way at some point. So I feel like that's one of the things that I think is powerful about the language.