it's not a party until someone ruins the carpet.

No matter how hard I try, some crazy thing happens and wax spills all over the place. Always. Every time. But there were no casualties, just a little ego bruising of my carpet. But with that said, I have some pictures to share:

3 of 4 drawers are waxed.

Drawer 1:

Drawer 2:

Drawer 3:

I honestly couldn't be more excited about this. (Well, maybe if I had enough wax to finish the fourth drawer. Which may or may not be the case, but I'll figure that out later.) I think I'm going to nix the plexi idea. The encasement is intriguing, as is the "do not touch" aspect, but I want this to feel more approachable, more engaging. I guess, I just want people to feel as though they should touch the things that will be on it. (Although I just looked over at it, and, I might not be opposed to just leaving it as-is. A box with wax filled drawers. For some reason this is appealing.)

And on one more note, here is a gallery of pictures I took of the wax's texture. The snow-flaking is just an interesting thing to me. Reminds me of something I read a long time ago about how some guy was able to prove that the coast line of Great Britain was infinite.

poratability is key

Behold my new treasure:

I set out today looking for one thing to come home with, and here it is. A not-too-big and not-too-small box with drawers and a cover. I'll have to yank out that crazy purple liner, and change the lock, but! it's my new transportable wunderkammer.

For years I've been obsessing over Wunderkammers and within the past month I've developed a use for said obsession-- making my own in various forms. (My theory and reasoning into why it's I'm doing this and the point will follow in its own post, for now, this is all about the box and what I will do with it.)

So, for this round of wunderkammerness, I will be removing the liner, pouring wax, inserting wooden ledges to form a lip for plexi to rest on, and then i will be using this first batch of keys to create coton linter casts.

I have about 100 keys of various sizes, shapes and purposes--these are just the most exciting.

I envision this box turning out to be the collected dissection remnants. When the drawers are opened, you will see these paper keys pinned down and dissected; the black wax acts as it does in traditional dissection trays. There will be text, but placement and words aren't decided yet. I just can't stop thinking about this image of the paper/fragile/meltable key.

Another project I've taken on is my locket:

I bought it from one of the street jewelry sellers in soho for remarkably cheap. The left side is muddled text from Emerson. The only legible "forwards" text reads: "Then the...cape felt by him...The sky is less gran...the population." The backwards "legible" text reads: "or to...senses rain on this...the animal". On the right side I'm going to insert a skeltal study drawing of an elephant.

In some ways I want to embrace a more performative role with building these spaces/objects/relationships. Instead of just showing my hand while making these things, maybe become an actual story teller/performer. Wearing some of the objects (I wear the locket every day as it is) and maybe becoming one of the objects.

This is all leading somewhere. Somewhere being another post.

louise bourgeois made me do it, or intro post to say hello

Bourgeois is one of those artists I look to every once in a while as a way to just look without looking to hard. Not to say I can't or won't look critically, but, for me, her work is something to just exist with. To just let tell you a story and to just let flow. With this said, I've been to her retrospective at the Guggenheim twice so far. The first I wandered with sketchbook in hand; the second, I strolled about with the audio guide and just pressed random buttons out of order and tried to make sense of it all.

At some point, Rob Storr says something that struck me. "...architecture of memory..." I can't remember the true context of his little blurb but, I was looking at one of the Femme Maison pieces.

For years I've been trying to tackle why I consider the body to be architectural space. It's structure, yes. It contains things, yes. Does it have to do with flow and control? Maybe. How about some semi-romantic nonsense regarding bodies as temples? Probably. But until I heard those words while looking at a house/body draped with cloth, I didn't get it. But I have it now: the body is what houses memory.

Now, considering the relationship of construction and architecture, I would say I am building my space by constructing my identity. And with this, I want to emphasize "I am building" to nod at the performative value of identity and memory. Memory is the key to identity in that I am constantly learning "what is" and "what is not" in order to identify myself as the "is" or "is not" (or more grammatically correct, the "am" and "am not"?). With this constant defining of self and other, memory comes to play with knowing what has been defined, what is being defined and what is redefined. The constant construction of relationships between myself and the other, I must continually remember and actively navigate what is self and what is other.

I must continually build and rebuild my memory's space, my memory's house as my self.