Just a few Pictures

Back home...

so I've been back in oly a little less than a week now. it has been great to see everyone and tell my stories of the road to all of my friends. but it has got me thinking what is it to tell a story? what is it to communicate an experience effectively to many different people? communication is such a sticky wicket. all I keep repeating to everyone to try to sum up the experience is , "Before this I don't think I realized what the term 'transformative' meant. Now that word makes sense to me." this is such an inadequate description of what it was like to do what I did. the world is so much more beautiful and full of possibility than it ever was before. and all I did was drive for a long time and run around trying to capture what I saw. but still it changed the way I see this country. makes me wonder if my head would explode if I went outside of this country on a trip like this. like I go to Europe and as soon as I walk out of the airport my head would quietly make a little popping noise. Maybe.
so I have not had too much time to sit down and edit my footage, right now I am more concerned with formulating a plan for what to do with everything I've captured.

-B

Olympia, WA

So we are home. It has been 3 weeks since I have been in this house and in my room. There is a gigantic pile of mail and schoolwork waiting for me. I feel very behind in all of my classes. All things considered it was worth it. This is a trip that I will never forget.
As we pulled into Katie's house I figured out a good way of presenting all of my material. I should present it as a sort of spalding gray monologue narrative. I do a presentation in front of an audience made of either people or cameras with a map behind me and talk about the trip day by day and show the shorts I have made. hmm just an idea...
so yeah the rest of this blog is going to cataloging the process of me putting together this project.

-B

Billings, MT

2:21... actually 1:21AM Mountain time. Last night we drove from Chicago to a small town on the boarder of Wisconsin and Minnesota called La Crosse . We slept in Katie's car at a rest stop outside of town. It was an ugly and charming and intimate night.
Today as we stopped to gas up and eat we found out that we were right next to the badlands in South Dakota. Well we stopped there and took a lot of amazing pictures. It is an amazingly beautiful place. I will be posting some onto the website at some point.
Tonight we are in Billings, Montana. Over the last 27 hours we have driven a total of 1300 miles. This boggles my mind and I am one of the people who is doing it!
Once we got into Billings we drove around trying to find a cheap motel room to stay in for the night, but after driving to 4 or 5 different el cheap motels all of which had no vacancy signs up we decided to bite the bullet and get a spendy nice room. But alas those were full too! Katie asked a clerk why rooms were so scarce and it turns out Billings is being graced by the presence of one of the redneck holy circle... no not jeff foxworthy... the other one... Larry the cable guy. needless to say there was a loud groan and a forehead slap coming out of the car when the news was broken to me. We finally found one place downtown that had rooms for rent and here we are. One funny thing about this specific Billings motel is that every 4 ft in the parking lot there are signs that say "make sure to take all of your valuables out of vehicles. Management is not responsible for (basically anything that gets stolen)".
Tomorrow we try for Spokane, WA were my mother and sister live. Then Omak and Home to Olympia.
861 miles to go,
-B

Monee, Il

Katie and I are in a motel room south of Chicago. it is 2:11AM. I am on the computer getting ready to go on the big guided tour through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Grad school is a scary proposition. for 100 grand I will be allowed to continue as a semi-state sponsored artist for awhile longer, but I will have to pay back some of the loans... whatever.
Asked my step-dad what he would do if he was me with grad school on the table and he asked me a great question,"Is this your life's work?" I answered yes and he told me that then money shouldn't matter.
My mind always goes back to the friends of mine that I knew back when I lived in a small towns in eastern Washington... the ones who didn't get out... the ones who stayed behind and started their lives with a capital "L." They got the wife or husband the kids and the morgage. Many of them are now divorced with 100 grand worth of debt and all they have to show for it is an ex who hates them and kids they get to see on the weekends if they are lucky. Me? I think my life is meant to be poor and insignificant but filled with movies. I love doing them, good ones bad ones extremely pretentious ones... I just love to make for the sake of making. I cannot conceive of my little experiments ever making me any money, but that has gotten to be less important than just following this productive streak as far as it can take me.
2193 miles to go...
-B

The Metal of Shiloh

Women of the KKK

History is on sale in flea markets all over Missouri. The good and the downright ugly. Who would buy this?

We're All Gonna Die

the first video I made from the footage I took while traveling down to georgia.

oh yeah introductions...

I am Brad Hutchinson an Evergreen State College media student. I am traveling across the country with my girlfriend Katie. We are taking on this epic journey to capture little pieces of America for our own video projects. I plan on finishing this project before I graduate and move onto the SAIC's MFA in Studio Program.

Memphis, TN

going to Memphis for the day. today is our one fun day before we drive onward back to Washington state. we are headed to Graceland, Sun Studio and Corky's. Think we also might go watch Grindhouse.
2675 miles to go.

Laurel, MS in 360

Laurel Mississippi

it is 11:03 AM and I am in Laurel Mississippi. in quite possibly the worse motel room within at least 250 miles. it is over-priced there is mold in the tiny bathroom the crappy wallpaper is falling off the moldy paper thin walls. but Katie and I go now to record things. Tonight we drive to Memphis and after that Washington DC. So yes... the filming goes well for my project 3500 pictures and eight dv tapes worth of footage are done... ready for review. I will begin posting some of these pics in the very near future. I miss Washington... I will be back in a week but that is 2700 miles away. Hope we make it.

-Brad