Something to Tide Me Over

I was doing a little checking on the bavablog, and I have three blog posts titled “Something to Tide You Over,” which is probably not very good for delineation and discovery. Then again, bavatuesdays has always been a b blog. The oldest of the three posts dates back to 2009 when I joyfully shared the following clip from the 1982 horror comedy Creepshow. The scene is from the episode “Something to Tide You Over” wherein Richard (Leslie Nielsen) buries Harry (Ted Danson) up to his neck in the sand and then explains his watery fate.

The second post was from 2011 during the heady days of ds106 while I was on my GIF making tear. I tried to capture the moment in that episode when the TV on the beach shorts out as the tide rises and the ocean claims its bounty.

The final of the three posts was this past June, making it a much more recent intervention. This post is an update on my progress with the diorama I’m building that features a scene from this very episode of Creepshow. It’s pretty safe to say this segment has haunted my imagination for decades, and the diorama is my most recent attempt to exorcise those buried alive demons.

Something to Tide You Over

Progress on the diorama over the past 4 months since that post was written has been significant. In fact, I’m happy to say that it’s finished.* You can get a sense of the result from the video below:

The scene really pops at night, but here’s a bit longer clip of the window scene taken earlier that day:

There’s a certain sense of relief and joy having this thing finally done. The beginning of this year was difficult and the bava.studio and diorama space helped tide me over some rough waters. I’ll spend the end of this post with more details of the design/building and requisite shout outs to all the awesome folks who helped make it happen.

Diorama with original idea for sand in Creepshow diorama which had a tan wool blanket on top of mesh wire with various sized boxes beneath to catch contours of sand

But before I spread the bava love, I just wanted to reflect for a moment on the diorama. It’s been fun seeing folks stroll by and try to figure it out. The dialogue taken from the graphic novel on the walls is in English, so often there’s a fair bit of translation happening amongst the Italians—but that may have even amplified the mystery/interest. I hope this is something that a few people see in a specific time and place and are just like “WTF?” If the window scene engenders a sense of bewildered wonder in at least one person, I think it did its job.

Bav-o-Rama finally live with Creepshow scene from “Something to Tide You Over”

The idea that someone might think back 5, 10, or 15 years and say to someone, “Remember that weird window in Trento with the head buried in the sand watching his illicit lover drown on a 1971 Motorola black & white TV?” Aspirational, I understand, but at the same time that’s the only metric. Truly untraceable, not linked to traffic, reputation, money, or any of it. A number of folks have asked if I have a website, by which they really mean Instagram, and in the end I was glad I could succinctly reply “no.” I’ve struggled a bit early on with the idea of bridging the diorama to the web (beyond this humble blog) and in the end I decided against promoting it online. More and more I think the bava.studio/diorama experiment is about being there—a project to anchor me to where I am. It’s tempting to use the web to erase borders and cultural particularity, while at the same time the built environment I live in often belies my own cultural beginnings and imagination (a huge part of who I am). So this little window in the center of the Italian alpine city of Trento is a meager attempt to bridge those sensibilities somehow, a way of reaching out in an alternative space to the increasingly dominant virtual realm.

An early, quite accurate sketch of the Creepshow diorama

Anyway, I’m not sure all that is fully fleshed out, but the diorama sure does feel right. And that’s only thanks to the many folks who helped build it. First and foremost, Tim Owens was the one who encouraged me to get the space and treat it like a lab/workshop over a year ago, and that’s been a saving grace. This is a strange case of role reversal between Tim and I, usually I’m the idea guy and Tim builds the hell out of it. I can now see what I’ve been missing out on—see Reclaim Arcade for details 🙂 Maren Deepwell has been an early fan of the concept, and has been someone I’ve talked through the various concepts while trying to re-think the blog in terms of local space in a post-pandemic world. She also recommended I bring the diorama up to window-level rather than starting at the floor. This was a great suggestion, and really changed the way I imagined the diorama from then on.

The good folks at Domus in the process of building out the custom diorama for bava.studio

It’s worth noting that if it were not for Riccardo, Alberto, and the whole Domus team here in Trento, the diorama would not even exist. They built it out back in April, and that has made all the difference!

The diorama in-process with a look at the paneled wall coming along

In the following image you get a view from the street and can see both the positioning of the TV and the head as well as an idea of how the panels enclose the diorama:

With the diorama built it was about building it out with various pieces, such as the mannequin head which is actually a test head for training future hair dressers. This allowed me to have Mike of Mike’s Salon here in Trento style the hair so it looks like Ted Danson’s mane in the episode. Mike is the hippest of the hip, if only I were so cool!

Mike styling the mannequin’s head before it is planted in the sand of an imaginary beach

I already had the 1971 black and white Motorola TV left over from the Living Room Console exhibit at UMW in 2015 (which is in many ways the centerpiece).

I also had a copy of the Creepshow graphic novel that I would lay on the sand so folks have some clue of what they’re looking at. After that I just needed a tripod, a camera (I used a Sony ZV-1 that was hanging around), a blue claw crab (found an amazing one on Amazon), and then a few bags of sand—that was pretty much it.

I think the crucial piece of the exhibit was working with long-time collaborator Michael Branson Smith (MBS), who is an absolute fount of amazing ideas. Not only did he edit together the video of Vicky drowning that’s playing on the TV in the exhibit, but he also had the idea of filling the beach background with actual panels from the graphic novel to give the diorama context.

MBS is amazing, he chose the various scenes from the graphic novel and worked with graphic artist Bea Kotuk to make it all a reality. Here is Bea’s sketched mockup of the window:

In fact, Bea’s work on the actual design of the panels was nothing short of amazing, here is another mock-up of the construction followed by near complete versions of each of the panels:

In many ways these panels make the entire diorama work seamlessly as a full blown scene with context and a condensed storyline. As usual MBS shows the way with his ridiculous talent, and Bea took my rough ideas and made them beautiful—the head in the ceiling is simply amazing! Their contribution is hard to over-estimate here, in many ways it’s a co-production, as it should be!

Once I had the final versions of all the panels with proper font and sizing, I turned to my son’s friend Ricci to have them printed out. He helped me get the art by Bryan Mathers for my custom Yie-Ar Kung-Fu cabinet printed, so he was the logical go to. Once we had the art printed on heavy duty 3M adhesive paper, we opted to use thumb tacks to apply the art to the panels rather than apply it with adhesive given these panels will be re-used for new scenes. Ricci did an awesome job on the prints, and even helped me get the panels applied.

Ricci give the A-OK signal as the panels are being applied

It was at this point that the diorama felt like it was quickly coming together. The project was so close to done I could taste it. But there was one issue still outstanding, how would I manage the sand. My original idea of using wire mesh, boxes, and a wool blanket was impractical because the sand would get everywhere and the actual construction would allow for no post facto adjustments within the diorama.

Original idea for creating contoured foundation to lay sand upon.

So it was back to the drawing board, but this time I had a better idea that included a self-contained, inclined sand box that fit the window space. What’s more, it had a perimeter of plexiglass to keep the sand from getting all over the place, which turned out to be crucial.

Sketch of the inclined sandbox that would allow for a contained space for the sand.

From concept to concrete reality, I can’t say enough great things about Italian carpenters!

A look at the sandbox in the window space; the penultimate piece of the diorama puzzle.

After the sandbox was in place I added 3 bags, 5 KG each, of sand and placed the head, blue claw crab, TV, and tripod. Soon after I added the graphic novel and the diorama elements were all in place.

The Creepshow diorama with everything in its place

The final piece was placing a strip of warm LED lights around the inside of the window frame to ensure the panels can be seen and read cleanly. The lights make the window space really pop at night, and it looks awesome. The LED strips were pretty easy to install, although I probably need a better long-term solution than the electric tape and double-side tape I’ve hanged them with at the moment.

I would be remiss if I did not give a special shout-out to my partner, Justin Webb,  at Reclaim for seeing the value and joy that comes out of a space of your own to practice what we preach.  Fellow eighties kids rule!

As you can see, this was an international co-production including various Americans, German-Brits, and glorious Italians, which speaks more broadly to how every project I’ve been part of over the years has been an amalgam of great people.

In fact, none greater than Antonella who has not only been a huge supporter of the idea of the space and encouraged me to create a self-indulgent and arguably superfluous installation in the center of town, but went out of her way to secure the lease, figure out the utilities, and generally help my illiterate ass manage a reality outside my monolingual bubble. What’s more, she has listened to endless riffs and concepts for the design of the studio and the diorama and provided real, honest feedback every step of the way—not sure one can have a greater partner than that. I mean she guided me up and until the final placement of the TV on the sand to avoid making the beach space seem too empty. This would not have happened without her help and for her and that I’m rich as kings.

Sorry the later part of this post devolves into a victory lap, but for some reason it feels like just that. Today I’m happy to know and work with all these people, and sometimes that’s enough.

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* I did have an idea for making the camera live and being activated to switch the image on the TV when someone stays in front of the diorama for 20+ seconds. Turns out this was aspirational, and I also wanted to avoid having being filmed live on the street for all sorts of privacy reasons.