'IT'S ABOUT TIME': A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

Eric Woods was lying in bed one night thinking about time capsules he buried as a boy -- they contained things like G.I. Joes and letterman jacket medals found on a bus -- when the notion of a grander scheme occurred to him. The result, "It's About Time. A Collaborative Project," opens Friday at the Lorimier Gallery.

"It's About Time" is a mixed-media installation unlike anything patrons of area art exhibits may be accustomed to. It employs seven slide projectors throwing 80 different images onto wall-mounted images of people and their words. As viewers walk into the room, they affect the work, blocking certain projections from view, creating shadows and something altogether new.

"Sometimes I don't think of myself as the artist," says Woods, a 1996 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. "I'm more like the facilitator. People being here are more like the artist."

Woods, a graphic designer for the Southeast Missourian, began the time capsule project at the end of 1997 by inviting hundreds of friends and strangers to send him a likeness of themselves and a paragraph describing their year. More than 30 people responded.

Woods says the idea of a time capsule poses larger questions about concepts of time, longevity, legends and history. His grandmother answered and wrote about being 81 years old and perhaps not being around 20 years from now.

A man Woods doesn't even know wrote about quitting drinking in 1997. Another man wrote about becoming a father.

"Some of them are quite moving," Woods says of the responses.

A shelf on one wall of the gallery is lined with small likenesses of a Dalmatian, the symbol of a show very much like a dog burying a bone. Guests are invited to take something from the shelf and replace it with something of their own.

The objects -- perhaps a tube of lipstick or a stick of gum -- are "signs of the times" that will be buried in the time capsule. This is another way the viewer participates in the show.

The show will be videotaped, the tape to be buried in a vessel of Woods' design along with the book he is compiling. Those who participated also will receive a copy of the book.

Woods has not decided where to bury the time capsule but says it will be a "significant" place.

The show runs through the end of July and in a sense won't end then. Woods doesn't know if the time capsule ever will be dug up.

"I've got in mind the idea of coming back in 20 years and rediscovering these things," he says. "It's like looking at old videotape of yourself... You rediscover stuff about yourself."

He hopes people will come to the gallery open to a different experience than usual.

"I hope they stay and take a piece of this with them. In a way it's like a miniature time capsule," he says.

A reception for Woods will be held from 5-8 p.m. Friday at the gallery, 119 Independence St. Also opening in Gallery 100 is "Light Struck: Photographs by Lisa Goodlin." A graduate of SIU, Goodlin lives in Syracuse, N.Y. Her recent work from Mexico explores the themes of wealth, poverty, decay and humor.