adam savage here in my cave with a show-and-tell
it's a little bit of showing in a little bit of telling uh so uh
this is an old one i was reading a news article this has got to be 15 years ago now i was reading
a news article about places in china where entire towns are devoted to one activity
and this specifically was about a town in china where everyone painted van goghs
they had their specialties but they hand-painted in-oil paints replicas of van goghs and then they
read in the article how inexpensive they were like you could buy a hand-painted replica of a van gogh
for maybe fifty dollars
that like for me when i read that i was like i could get a van gogh for 50 bucks
i i mean i just wanna experiment and see what you get for fifty dollars and so i chose uh
i chose some irises and i received a few weeks later this painting in the mail
now it wasn't stretched on a canvas i'm not even sure it came with a stretcher i think i had to buy
this and put it on it and like pull it around and put the staples on but this is the kind of thing
this is this is like 50 from ebay from this town in china where everyone paints van goghs
and it's got like heavy brush work it feels somewhat authentic it's really neat
but once i had it i was like it's cool but the reason i ordered it was because well i think i
was looking for some kind of experience and i don't know what that experience was but this i
mean i put it on the canvas stretcher and it still wasn't quite it then a few days later
i was at flax well we used to have an art store at the end of valencia street uh now they're oh
they're over at fort mason they've moved from the hardest neighborhood to park in to an even harder
neighborhood to park in um but flax uh i was in flax buying some art supplies and i looked up and
i saw all their different frames and i thought oh i should buy an elaborate frame for this painting
that would be neat and so i went up to the guy in the framing department and i was like i'm looking
for a frame and i knew the dimensions i had the dimensions written down whatever this is 12 by 16.
and i was like you have a 12 by 16 ornate frame he's like what kind of ornate i'm like really
ornate he's like that's not enough to go on and i said how about the kind of ornate that says chase
this guy out of the museum like i want it to look like i am literally lifting a priceless classic
painting and walking out of the museum like like uh the thomas crown affair that's what i want
reader he sold me this frame about a hundred the price tag is 140 dollars
it was on sale at flax back when i bought it what date is this i wonder 20 2012. no no no
this is that's not 2012. no uh that's 12 by 16 right no no idea when i bought this but
i really think it's like 15 years ago so then i took my van gogh and i put it in my painting
there we go and now
right i mean you kind of see how satisfying this is right like i love this object this object makes
me endlessly happy i actually kind of leave it leaning up all over the place because i just feel
like i want someone to be like what's the van gogh do i leaning up against the corner i mean
this is how i do my post-apocalyptic pretend uh larping i pretend that i've been to museums around
the world to build my own art collection like the uh the brother-in-law and and children of men
this is a quick show-and-tell there's not much more of a story to this then
i was compelled by one object i was compelled to complete it with another object
and the two of them together made a third object which i find really compelling and delightful
yeah thank you guys for watching and i will see you next time