P1120264-C-Web 560x315.mp4 Courtney Egan, Sleepwalkers (2011), single-channel video loop projection. C: Are these real, composited, time-lapsed flowers (or CGI)? A: Courtney has a friend who cultivates night-blooming cereus. The friend knows these flowers and their "habits" so well that he/she? knows the exact evening that they will bloom. The friend alerts Courtney, and Courtney must drop everything (when possible) and spend the night, capturing the whole process (ca. 8 hrs.) from opening to closing. So, they were not computer-generated although they were arranged with the aid of computer software. The piece was well underway when I approached Courtney about participating in the show. After carefully searching for a scenarios in which to place her work, we settled on the bathroom. The bathroom has always felt so magical and luxurious to me because of its scale and the fact that it's just off the main barroom. I love the sexy suggestive quality of having a bathtub right there available for anyone to partake of during the evening, especially during those legendary speakeasy parties. It's like an offering, and Courtney's piece is a furtherance of that offering idea. It also has religious overtones that might suggest a church font. Nothing explicit, though. Courtney adapted this work in progress by stretching the image just enough so that it fit comfortably in the long tub. Not only do the blooms signify beginnings, but in their retraction, they signify endings. I recently took a bath in there with the projection onto my naked body, and the effect was equally of growth and decay.