Feb 15, 2005

"Suburbia" Project Inaugurated

JIM ANDERSON
CORRUGATED TIMES-DISPATCH

OLYMPIA -- Residents of Ken Lake awoke this morning to trees, houses, cars, and fences draped in shimmery white, after a late-night toilet-papering by area teenager Timothy "Timbo" Connley. Citing the influence of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artist bedecked the neighborhood with hundreds of rolls of Charmin, Quilted Northern, and Scott tissues.

Locals were treated to an ethereal, sanitized vision of the future. "It's a real treat," said Lucius Bollinger, curator of a performance art museum and vacant lot. "His work is other-worldly, in a down-homey kind of way."

A small cardboard sign posted near the entrance to the community read, "NATURE CALLS; WILL YOU ANSWER HER?"

Some, interpreting the artwork as mere juvenile pranksterism, were nonplussed. "How am I supposed to get this stuff off my roof?" asked Mathilde Coopersmith, a sixty-five-year Ken Lake resident. Two houses down, George Gunders tried to rake tissues out of his holly hedge, with little success. "Sure, I get it," he said, "but that doesn't mean I like it."

"I am an artist, first and foremost," Connley stated, defending his work. "My art is meant to engage the viewer, to dematerialize truth and fact, fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, hippocampus and hippopotamus."

Asked to clarify, Connley replied, "Something like that."

Connley noted that his ancillary lawn-forking project ran up against budget and time constraints.

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