Chewy Chips Ahoy, Part II: Brendan Carroll

Agitators Collective, Peep Parade, 2006. 8,000 Marshmallow Peeps, dimensions variable.

One of the days when I was trying not to drink, this guy told me to go out and walk in Lincoln Park. I had already lived here for almost 2 years and I was like, “I live by a park?” I had no idea that I lived by one of the biggest parks in Jersey City. I said, "If I don’t have to pick up a drink, I will walk through this park.” I was walking through the park at 9am and it was beautiful.

Soon after, I quit my job at the bar and started going to my folk's house [more often] to paint Wisteria leaves in my mother’s bathroom. On the way there, I would photograph the Pulaski Skyway. I planned to photograph it one hundred times like Hiroshige's Hundred Views of Edo. That lead me to start photographing Jersey City. At the time I was listening to a lot of country music. A lot of Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Ray Price, George Jones, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, The Prisonnairs--all these tales of whoa. I decided to write my own tales of whoa and pair them with the Polaroids of Jersey City. [See Chewy Chips Ahoy, Part I] That was how it started...

I’ve been making this work for a long time and around 2006 I just started going crazy. I wanted to make something outside. So me and this guy Ryan, and my buddy Jason Seder decided to make artwork together outside. That’s how Agitators Collective started.

I had this dream around Easter time in 2006 about making a post office in Dublin out of marshmallows. That transformed into buying peeps at Target (also because they were 75% off). One of our buddies gave us money and we bought 8,000 peeps. That was our first project, "Peep Parade" in Jersey City Heights. It went down a staircase and cobblestone road. This project lead to all sorts of things like sculpture, and site [specific] artworks that I never thought I would make. I never considered it.

CC: How long did it last?

BC: A week and then it rained.

CC: People didn’t step on them?

BC: No, and this is the thing that made me realize my greatest source of satisfaction. We went back to River View Park to document the work in the afternoon; we made it at 7am. We were convinced that kids and other people were going to fuck it up and nobody touched it. We couldn’t believe it. It was intact, except some of the red peeps were displaced.

There are a lot of homeless people that live on a slope between Jersey City Heights and Hoboken. This guy—no shirt, jeans, kind of filthy, he was a drunk—came out and got down on his hands and knees to put the peeps back that were displaced and then he just walked away. I looked at Jason and said, “This is why we make this stuff.” That was the greatest feeling of satisfaction I’ve ever had from creating something.

Who Will Save Beauty, 2006.

For this piece we went around to different people in Jersey City and asked them to translate “Who will save beauty” in their native language. We had over 30 translations.

CC: Where was this exactly?

BC: [Who Will Save Beauty] was on Brunswick between 4th and 5th on the side of a gas station. When we were doing it, this Vietnamese lady was walking by and told us that it said “The pretty beautician yearns to be rescued” in Vietnamese. We asked her if she could change it, and she said, “I’d love to.” We thought she would just write it on a piece of paper and give us a translation, but no, this lady got up on a ladder. Across the street, there was a wake at an Italian funeral home. All of these Italians came over and asked what it was.

CC: Did you have to ask the gas station for permission?

BC: Roger Sayer is an artist and curates a space called Brunswick Windows that includes 2 storefronts and this wall. He asked us to make something [for the gas station wall].

Kitty Korn, 2006. Marshmallow Spooky Cats, 60 lbs of Candy Corn, 20 x 10 ft.

CC: Oh my god, I love candy corn!

BC: Yeah, well this is 60 pounds of it. Jason was walking down Newark Avenue and he saw this antique store with a “For Rent” sign. He wanted to make an installation there, so he called up the realtor and the guy was like “Okay, here are the keys.” No questions. We made this thing before Halloween and there's a picture of all these kids pressing their face against the glass. It was really wonderful.

Sweet & Sour Chorus, 2007. 100 Mylar balloons, stencil, spray pint, 20 x 15 x 9 ft.

This is the same storefront space. It was still empty. It’s one hundred Mylar balloons spray painted with a happy and sad face.

CC: You spray painted each one?

BC: Yeah, we killed so many brain cells on that project.

Jersey City Sunshine, 2008. Turmeric powder, dimensions variable.

Jason wanted to use turmeric to make a drawing, so we went to this abandoned lot off Garfield Avenue [at Pacific and Carteret Avenues]. When my dad was growing up, this place was full of purple mountains of chemicals.

Love is All Around, 2008. Journal Square, Jersey City, New Jersey.

I wanted to make something with cups. When we were doing this project, "Love is All Around," two cops came up behind us and I thought we were going to get in trouble. I hear one of them say, “I’d like to buy an A.” Then they just said, “I hope there’s not a keg party after this” and walked away.

Collective Hopscotch, 2008. Grove Street Path Station, Jersey City, New Jersey.

This was our hopscotch board at the Grove Street Path Station. This little girl had never played hopscotch and didn’t know what to do. Her mom just hopped right in there and showed her kid how to do it.

Red or Blue, 2008. Newark, New Jersey.

The exhibition Red Badge of Courage Revisited [at the Newark Arts Council] was based on the book by Stephen Crane. The protagonist is Henry Fleming and it’s about his experience of the American Civil War. It covers the Battle of Chancellorsville. Crane was born and raised in Newark at 14 Mulberry Place. We went to his house, which is now a parking lot, and reproduced the battle map on the sidewalk. It charts the true movements of the whole Civil War. It was sort of like a roadside memorial. We made two pieces for this show; the other one was in the gallery.

CC: Is that tape?

BC: Yes, just duct tape from the dollar store. We try to get stuff that is particular to Jersey City and to our neighborhood. Like the turmeric we used is from Little India in Jersey City.

CC: What next for you guys?

BC: We have two projects in the works. We’re going to make something for Brunswick Windows again; and paint the phrase “Hard Times Come Again No More”--that was a song from the Civil War--using glow in the dark paint.

CC: Did you find that song when you were making the piece for Red Badge...?

BC: Jason’s friend sent him the song. We felt like it resonates right now because of the economy, Obama, the red and blue states, the two Americas, [etc.]

CC: Are you still making your Polaroid images?

BC: Polaroid announced in March of this year that they’re discontinuing the production of Polaroid film. You can still buy it, but I’m too cheap to spend $20 on a pack of ten. It didn’t hit me until the end of the summer that this is my medium, this is what I use, and it’s not around anymore. What type of work am I going to make? Maybe the type of working I’m making with the Agitators Collective is the direction I’m going to move in.

CC: You wouldn’t continue to do non-Polaroid photographs?

BC: When I think about making work, I don’t think about learning how to do photography. I’m in a transition period, so I’m not really sure what's next.

Brendan Carroll of Agitators Collective in Miami, 2008.

Last week, Agitators Collective made the above installation in Miami at a location about twenty blocks from the art fairs in the Wynwood section. Carroll says:

"We jumped at the chance to make something in a new setting. We wrote 'Hard Times Come Again No More' is Christmas garland on a chain link fence on the NE 17th St and NE 2nd Ave. It may still be there, and it may not. We bought the tinsel/garland at a dollar store in Hialeah, on the west side of Miami. We wanted to use materials particular to the neighborhood. Palm trees, and blue skies tend to make everything seem like paradise, however, we noticed vacant lots, derelict buildings, as well as new condominiums and office spaces. A group of winos and hustlers lived in the vicinity under a mangrove tree or something. One of them, a young guy named Richard, said that the area was a pick up spot for Johns, and what not. He offered his services for a fee, or a lift to the bus stop three blocks away. Other than that, he was harmless. While we were there, Jason met a homeless artisan who fashioned grasshoppers from palm leaves, and he bought two of them. This guy's office was in Burger King around the corner."

To see more work by Agitators Collective, visit their Flickr stream.