We're nearly at the end of the season, and there are five artestants yet! And three of them are good. Luckily, two will be eliminated, so it's all almost over. The artists are all eating together when Simon de Pury comes in with tickets! Now, on Project Runway, contestants have been sent to France, but this is Work of Art so the gang is going to Cold Spring, New York on the Metro North. And they won't even have time to stop at Zabar's for a black and white cookie, so go go go!
On the train, Dusty is impressed by the beauty of the area. Apparently, the fetid swamps of Putnam County remind him of home. Right by the train station the artists meet China Chow...or do they? I swear that the cuts are designed to hide the fact that China recorded her instructions for the challenge at some other time, just by talking to the camera. The one long shot is clearly some coverage of empty staring. I bet someone didn't take into consideration the difficulty of recording live sound by a friggin' railroad station.
Anyway, the challenge is to accost the local yokels and make a portrait. They have $200 to spend in the dying downtown strip. Young passes several empty stores, then dicks around in the local inn, because he thinks it might be a source of gossip. Because locals stay at inns, not daytrippers.
Kymia goes door to door, but nobody's buying till she enters a local junk shop and finds the two weirdos who run the place. Sarah Jimenez seems to be getting the cold shoulder because of her mixed-race looks.
Dusty corners a little girl and strikes up a conversation about candy because he doesn't QUITE look enough like a child molestor normally. He explains that he has a little daughter and wishes he were with her. (Don't worry big Dust, you'll be going home to her real soon.) Lola goes to a coin shop and talks to the guys there. It's about as boring as it sounds though she is shown an eighteenth century note that contains the warning "'Tis Death to Counterfeit." Finally, Sarah J gets some good attention at the local firehouse and finds an old guy there.
Young very cleverly finds a local artist and uses his $200 to get a quicky portrait of himself done—he takes photos of the process of being painted and those photos, artfully arranged in some bullshit way around his own portrait, will be his work of art! SMART!
Back in the studio, all is not going well. Dusty spent $200 on candy and is making a mosaic of the little girl out of M&Ms. There's a shot of Lola working on her piece while eating candy. Kymia does some R. Crumb sort of bullshit with the weirdos and all the crap they like. Sarah decides to make a portrait by hammering tiny holes into aluminum. Apparently, that's a material firefighters use? She also makes 58 nametags to represent the 58 years her subject's been fighting fires. Young pastes photos to planks of wood. And Lola...
and Lola...
AND LOLA CANNOT PAINT! Aha, the whole season makes sense now! The bullshit objects, the endless flailing, the tracing, the use of texts instead of pictures, the gift-wrapping of a shovel in newspaper and calling it art! SHE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO PAINT! NOT EVEN A LITTLE!!! So her portrait is abstract—color laser copies of old currency, a letter to her subjects, and a tiny bad drawing that she wraps in tin foil.
Simon comes in and makes fun of Dusty's bullshit, so he comes up with an even dumber idea, then realizes that it's unworkable. It doesn't even make sense—he wants to make origami fortune-telling devices as children do, write in them, put them over a photo of the girl he took, then paint them? WHAT? Anyway, it's back to the candy. Simon doesn't like Kymia's thing either, but only because he has eyes. Later, Lola casts a spell designed to keep everyone on the show for the finale next week.
Anyway, then there's the gallery showing and some bizarre decisions. Perhaps still enamored with last week's Naked Lola, Judge Jerry inexplicably defends her nonsense portrait. Or maybe he's just relieved that she didn't use the word "I" in the name of her piece, finally. China Chow explains that she thought Kymia's piece was a cartoon (it had a rather R. Crumb look about it) until she saw the subjects in person—"and they're cartoons!" I bet those hairy lowlifes and their creepy doll collection never even had a drink at the bar at Corton. God, upstaters are such freakish humanoids. Young messed up his idea a bit by rather too artfully haphazardly arranging his wooden planks around his portrait. He should have just stacked them horizontally in front of the portrait he paid for, like a grate to peer through. Dusty's M&M piece is falling apart, and the judges love it. Lola calls bullshit on all that at the crit, since the M&Ms are falling off the canvas thanks to Dusty's haphazard gluing not because of any artistic intent. She makes many many faces. Good thing she doesn't play poker. She cries during her crit, a lot.
Kymia wins! Young shits himself in sullen, silent rage, but then he's safe too! Sarah J got a very mixed crit, but a) she can paint and b) her piece of shit didn't collapse while the cameras were rolling so she's safe. Lola's attack on Dusty was to no end, as both those losers will be hanging out at Port Authority and waiting for the bus home all night together.
Next week: the snippets of footage at the finale suggest that everyone loves Young and he will win. What can I say, except "Congratulations, Kymia!"?
PS: Judge Jerry's own recap is a must read.
On the train, Dusty is impressed by the beauty of the area. Apparently, the fetid swamps of Putnam County remind him of home. Right by the train station the artists meet China Chow...or do they? I swear that the cuts are designed to hide the fact that China recorded her instructions for the challenge at some other time, just by talking to the camera. The one long shot is clearly some coverage of empty staring. I bet someone didn't take into consideration the difficulty of recording live sound by a friggin' railroad station.
Anyway, the challenge is to accost the local yokels and make a portrait. They have $200 to spend in the dying downtown strip. Young passes several empty stores, then dicks around in the local inn, because he thinks it might be a source of gossip. Because locals stay at inns, not daytrippers.
Kymia goes door to door, but nobody's buying till she enters a local junk shop and finds the two weirdos who run the place. Sarah Jimenez seems to be getting the cold shoulder because of her mixed-race looks.
Dusty corners a little girl and strikes up a conversation about candy because he doesn't QUITE look enough like a child molestor normally. He explains that he has a little daughter and wishes he were with her. (Don't worry big Dust, you'll be going home to her real soon.) Lola goes to a coin shop and talks to the guys there. It's about as boring as it sounds though she is shown an eighteenth century note that contains the warning "'Tis Death to Counterfeit." Finally, Sarah J gets some good attention at the local firehouse and finds an old guy there.
Young very cleverly finds a local artist and uses his $200 to get a quicky portrait of himself done—he takes photos of the process of being painted and those photos, artfully arranged in some bullshit way around his own portrait, will be his work of art! SMART!
Back in the studio, all is not going well. Dusty spent $200 on candy and is making a mosaic of the little girl out of M&Ms. There's a shot of Lola working on her piece while eating candy. Kymia does some R. Crumb sort of bullshit with the weirdos and all the crap they like. Sarah decides to make a portrait by hammering tiny holes into aluminum. Apparently, that's a material firefighters use? She also makes 58 nametags to represent the 58 years her subject's been fighting fires. Young pastes photos to planks of wood. And Lola...
and Lola...
AND LOLA CANNOT PAINT! Aha, the whole season makes sense now! The bullshit objects, the endless flailing, the tracing, the use of texts instead of pictures, the gift-wrapping of a shovel in newspaper and calling it art! SHE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO PAINT! NOT EVEN A LITTLE!!! So her portrait is abstract—color laser copies of old currency, a letter to her subjects, and a tiny bad drawing that she wraps in tin foil.
Simon comes in and makes fun of Dusty's bullshit, so he comes up with an even dumber idea, then realizes that it's unworkable. It doesn't even make sense—he wants to make origami fortune-telling devices as children do, write in them, put them over a photo of the girl he took, then paint them? WHAT? Anyway, it's back to the candy. Simon doesn't like Kymia's thing either, but only because he has eyes. Later, Lola casts a spell designed to keep everyone on the show for the finale next week.
Anyway, then there's the gallery showing and some bizarre decisions. Perhaps still enamored with last week's Naked Lola, Judge Jerry inexplicably defends her nonsense portrait. Or maybe he's just relieved that she didn't use the word "I" in the name of her piece, finally. China Chow explains that she thought Kymia's piece was a cartoon (it had a rather R. Crumb look about it) until she saw the subjects in person—"and they're cartoons!" I bet those hairy lowlifes and their creepy doll collection never even had a drink at the bar at Corton. God, upstaters are such freakish humanoids. Young messed up his idea a bit by rather too artfully haphazardly arranging his wooden planks around his portrait. He should have just stacked them horizontally in front of the portrait he paid for, like a grate to peer through. Dusty's M&M piece is falling apart, and the judges love it. Lola calls bullshit on all that at the crit, since the M&Ms are falling off the canvas thanks to Dusty's haphazard gluing not because of any artistic intent. She makes many many faces. Good thing she doesn't play poker. She cries during her crit, a lot.
Kymia wins! Young shits himself in sullen, silent rage, but then he's safe too! Sarah J got a very mixed crit, but a) she can paint and b) her piece of shit didn't collapse while the cameras were rolling so she's safe. Lola's attack on Dusty was to no end, as both those losers will be hanging out at Port Authority and waiting for the bus home all night together.
Next week: the snippets of footage at the finale suggest that everyone loves Young and he will win. What can I say, except "Congratulations, Kymia!"?
PS: Judge Jerry's own recap is a must read.