Press Release
Amy O'Neill
Happy Trails Supersized (from Parade Float Graveyard)
1st - 31 Mach 2005
Born in Beaver, USA, in 1971, lives and works in Geneva and Brooklyn.
“The work of this American artist explores the oddities of her native
culture and of her adoptive home, Switzerland.
Two queen’s crowns, a red rose, and a gold star can be read as symbols
of good fortune. An oversized brown boot strap grouped within this context appears
conspicuously out of place.
These five signs are presented as abandoned fragments, fallen off of parade
floats from the 1960s. They are part of a series of objects titled Parade
Float Graveyard.
Three large-scale pencil drawings on canvas, entitled Rose Queens,
Happy Trails, and Monstro define the context of the fragments.
Documentary images of floats from past Pasadena Rose Bowl Parades were
used as source materials for the rendering of these “memorial drawings.”
To memorialise parade floats aims to highlight their status as very temporary
monuments of popular vernacular culture. The float fragments were made after
details taken from the drawings. The gold star refers to the 5-point gigantic
spur which can be seen in Happy Trails, the drawing depicting a pair
of boot/floats sauntering down the street, while the brown boot strap is imagined
as torn from one of the pair’s surface. The red rose and the queen’s
crowns are accessories found in Rose Queens, a parade float originally
designed as a showcase for beauty pageant contestants.
For the past 113 years, the Rose Bowl Parade has been held on New Year’s
Day in Pasadena, California. The parade’s organizers original intention
was to show off their home’s mild winter weather. As one organizer phrased
it: “Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.”
It is recorded in Pasadena’s Historical Library that another of the organizers
had visited Nice and was inspired by the Battle of the Flowers.
Rose Bowl Parade floats are also remarkable because of their decorative
guise so ridiculously whimsical in contrast to the propaganda they carry. A
float of flowers entered in the 1968 Rose Bowl Parade by the Fraternal
order of Odd Fellas and Rebekahs and titled Hark, Hark, the Ark is
described in the event’s official program as: “A depiction of Noah’s
great adventure to save the animal kingdom from 40 days and 40 nights of rain.”
The ark was originally covered in white chrysanthemums, pink chrysanthemums
covered the roof, and a blaze of red roses covered the deck: An archaic fundamentalist
biblical story dressed up as an oversized cuddly plush toy! Another monumental
float, this time by Kodak, depicting America the Beautiful (1977) portrayed
idyllic scenes of American family life on a rotating band that mimics a film.
Each scene – presented as a photographic frame and devoted to a particular
family value – is made up of organic materials (one was created with onion
seeds). Last and most ironically, Union Oil Company of California once presented,
in 1968, a revolving globe of 8,000 pink roses entitled A World of Adventure…
Amy O’Neill / March 2005