Heaven Gallery

Heaven Proudly Presents
"The Very Small Drive-In"
Featuring the video performance work "Thrift Store Odyssey and the Whale." By Sean Samoheyl

Sean Samoheyl is a sculptural video artist with a love of Drive-In's and puppets. He combined his passions by building a interior –to scale drive in sculpture and he projects a video of his puppet show on the screen. Sean will also do live puppetry the night of the show. Video Puppet Screening on Friday September 26th, 2008 at 8pm. $7 Suggested donation

There will be a drive-in built inside the main gallery at Heaven Gallery complete with carved and painted wooden cars and a concessions stand. Sculpter and puppeteer Sean Samoheyl will project his video "The Thrift Store Odyssey and The Whale" on the drive-in screen. Samoheyl will perform puppetry in the videos and also live within the space. Sean performs using flat puppets in a small toy theater that is actually a chest mounted box that he wears as he improvises the stories. Sean performed many times over traveling across the U.S. in 2007 and 2008 using a basic story that was never the same twice. "The Whale" is about a boy who is part whale and wants to discover his roots. "The Thrift Store Odyssey", part autobiography, is about a young man who leaves the city in search of a more authentic life in a farm community. The video is culled from footage of Sean's tour with his traveling puppet theater

With the sculpture of the drive in Sean Samoheyl is revisiting the vague memories he has of drive-in theaters as a child. He also explores the social aspects of drive-ins. "I wanted the drive-in to have layers of history with no clear indication of what era it is. I wanted it to be both run down and beloved. The cars seem almost not to be able to move now that they've made it to the movie. They are the exhausted, prized possessions of their owners. I imagined the drive-in to be inhabited by steel mill workers and supermarket check-out workers. Muscle cars with primed replaced fenders that may never get painted to match the rest of the car. The family vans and wagons that remind us of a time when it seemed like oil would never run out, or that gas would not exceed a dollar a gallon, or two dollars for that matter. It's also an attempt to see a drive-in as a gathering, a weekly pageant. A sort of camp out that doesn't last very long. "-Sean Samoheyl

Sean Samoheyl is an artist living in a farm collective in rural Virginia called Twin Oaks Community. His work is informed by the many jobs he's involved in, such as forestry, making rope, childcare, weaving hammocks and making tofu. Sean moved to the farm from Chicago in 2001 where he worked as a bike messenger. Although Sean has had a life long interest in car culture and design, at 34 years old he has never owned car.

http://www.seansamoheyl.com/