I have always been fascinated by the places where people work. I am not as interested in their cubicles or offices, because element of these places tend to be sterile, toned down, made presentable for professional purposes. More, I love the places where creativity happens unabated, to where we sequester ourselves, and obsessively create. More often than not these are places where we go to get away, and their appearances and systems of organization are for us alone, no one else. I think this is part of my fascination: that these are intensely private and personal spaces, where we go to ask questions, investigate the world, get immersed in our work. Undoubtedly some part of my fascination is voyeuristic, in the gathering of visual clues, the imperfect, obstructed view when peering through a key hole. I am less interested in directly observing the artist in his space (in some ways, creativity is like the electron, it cannot be analyzed while it is in motion), than in investigating the visual resultants available when the space lies dormant. I want to see how an artist’s tools are laid out, how his books are stacked, how the ubiquitous spatter of paint radiates out from a central point, what he keeps near at hand no matter where he is: the tiny details that hint at the deeply personal actions that occur when no one is around.
I see this work as an ongoing project, but for now, let me offer this first space: a garage where a father of a friend of mine is building a boat. She showed it to me off-handedly, (“Want to see my dad’s boat?”) but it felt scandalous; before ever shaking this stranger’s hand, I was afforded a deeply personal look into his psyche. I was drawn to the tools laid out just-so on mats, not in anal-retentive, impersonally, parallel lines, but gently spread out, each tool in its place, next to that whose function proceeds it. Like deciphering a cave painting, I felt like the meaning was just out of reach. I feel like I could almost tell for which project a particular mat was, as if a project is little but the sum of the tools necessary for its completion. Whereas I see my mind as a ball of knotted string, forever overlapping itself and full of dead ends, I imagine this man’s mind as a road map, each intersection labelled and proceeding toward an ultimate goal. Jotted yellow notepads offer a look at this organization, replete with lists, series, priorities. And everywhere, perfectly sharpened Number 2 pencils.
