dayton is not in ohio

Currently my studio is undergoing a transformation. I’m packing up, and emptying it. I’m erasing it. I’m stamping around it. I’m looking for an advantage in the metamorphosis from my own very specific workshop to a generic graduate studio. It’s the difference between our houses, and Plato’s house. One is where we live, the other is where meaning lives. In some places space is a utility (galleries, for example). In other places, space is a metaphor (old prisons, for example). I’m looking to find the studio where meaning lives. Mine just happens to be the ideal studio to search for meaning, because what’s meaning without an audience?

I’ve been floundering in my fishbowl for a while now. I’m looked down upon daily while cutting, hammering, gluing and making a terrific mess of my artistic practice. The occasional passerby will condescend to knock on the glass. We wave and smile. I don’t mind, I just go back to my crafts. But just up the street at the Shedd Aquarium they mind. “Please don’t tap on the glass,” the signs say. But what if the fish began tapping on the glass? What if, rather than just going about their business, the fish assembled in a row along the glass, and stared back? What if I stare back? Well, there’s nothing like a thirty foot tower, a four camera video surveillance system, and a digital video projector for finding out.

More soon…