Breaking news...the firestation crew (unfinished thesis project from last year) have finally put up their huge trussed columns...just before the most dramatic thunderstorm broke over Newbern. And finally we have wireless networking up in the studio. Joy.


Apart from that, today has been the day of visiting local people and potential clients for the $20,000 house. These spanned the extremes - from 86 year old Elizabeth Phillips, whose house is falling down around her but which she still keeps immaculately clean and tidy, her rag dolls and ornaments arranged on lace doilies, to schizophrenic Dinah, whose house is literally full of rubbish, leaving a 4ft square space in which she can stand, and who makes burial mounds for deceased household objects in her garden, covered in branches, brushwood and tarpaulins. These have a strange beauty and power; as does the entrance-way to her house (which you have to enter by crawling) covered in branches and flowers. She has no bathroom, and as a result of filling her house to the ceiling with trash, now sleeps outside. How we can really help her, it's hard to know, but it's also wonderful that she exists in her eccentricity - making her totemic artworks, and greeting my request for a photo with 'sure, I'm so dirty and ugly and mean, I'm a mean hard bitch, why the hell you take a picture of me.'