Ant-icipation

Ant Farm explores the fine art of... waiting

A A A Comments By Lisa Gray Thursday, Oct 5 2000

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Doug looked relaxed and happy, the way he looked when he'd rediscovered the time capsule. "This will be the part I remember," he said. "The anticipation. The part where nothing's really happening."

Deron Neblett

Time is not on their side: Ed Wilson and Starr Kennedy with the fussy Ant Farm fridge.

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Finally -- finally! at ten-fifty -- the last bolt came off. The door swung open to reveal

Dust.

The magazines and cardboard boxes had disintegrated. The film had melted onto its reel. On the fridge's surviving shelf sat a six-pack of Pearl; below it rested a dirty Coke bottle. Aerosol cans lay on their sides, their spray tops intact, their bottoms open and jagged-edged. Marilyn's pink-and-white designer dress was reduced to a heap of yellowish rags. The plastic Easter eggs, though, remained unnaturally shiny.

Michael told me that the time capsule and its contents had sold for $650; the silent auction's winner was a NASA scientist and art collector. Michael didn't know what the buyer would do with it. Put it in a Plexiglas box, perhaps? In the living room? Or better, the kitchen? Michael thought the buyer had gotten a bargain, that he'd scored a piece of art history. Doug crowed, for the umpteenth time that night, that the winner was responsible for hauling the mess away.

A few days after the party, the NASA scientist called the Art Guys. He couldn't take the capsule home, he said. His wife wouldn't let him.

The Art Guys called the next-highest bidder. She didn't want it, either.

By the middle of the week, though, they'd found a willing home: Marilyn Oshman, formerly Marilyn Lubetkin, but always an Ant Farm patron. Doug thinks she'll keep the capsule by her pool house.

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