In my final year at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, I was already exhibiting my artwork extensively and had begun to establish a name for myself in the Milwuakee art community, both through the work I was showing and through various events that I took part in organizing. In my eyes, the future looked bright and I looked forward to a successful carreer as an artist. But shortly after graduation, (and I'm sure you've heard this story before) I was faced with the inevitable realization that I needed to find some way of making a living. Although I had gained some recognition for my artwork, I had yet to make a dime off of it and I had no notion of how to go about doing so. While my education helped me discover how to make art, it left me completely unprepared to survive as an artist. This was the great failure of my education, but that is a diatribe for another post. I tried freelancing for the film and television industries, and landed a few jobs, but the pay was inconsistent and I found it hard to even pay for my $100 a month rent at the studio where I lived. Finally, I swallowed my pride and took a job hanging drywall for a Riverwest landlord. Suddenly I found myself working more or less full time. But after a hard day of hefting sheetrock, the barstool was much more tempting than the studio and my studio time was diminishing. Through clouds of drywall dust, I began eying up the carpenters, whose work seemed infinitely more interesting than what I was doing. I was able to assist on a few jobs and soon enough I was running my own woodworking business. This proved to take up even more time because now I had to deal with finding clients, making estimates, and filling in spreadsheets. Eventually, I was scarcely making artwork at all and I justified this by saying that my art education had made me a better craftsman, and that it was to thank for my successful business. This was true, but all along there was a nagging hollowness. Although I enjoyed my work, it could not fill the void created by my hiatus from art. I came to realize, as I have over and over again, that being an artist is in my nature and that anything else is a compromise incapable of sustaining my happiness. I credit my wife, Shana, for finally bringing me out of this hiatus. It was our collaboration, which began by passing absurd drawings across the dinner table, that brought me out of my torpor and back to what has developed into a serious and earnest art practice. But even after I was back in the game, I still felt this need to justify the seven years I spent as a carpenter. I knew that I had learned a great deal, but they still felt a bit like lost years in terms of my goals as an artist. Granted, there was a sort of plan all along; I'd use the carpentry business to build a shop that could double as an art studio. I'd use the construction mehtods I learned as a carpenter and apply them towards sculpture. And the plan worked, but was it enough to justify the vast amounts of energy diverted away from my art practice?
In fall of 2006, Shana and I were asked to mount a solo show occupying the three 2nd floor galleries of The Institute of Visual Arts on UWM campus. Both Shana and I had been reading Wendell Berry at the time and we were thinking about issues of our culture's loss of connection to the land. We hit upon the idea of creating a model of a farmstead that would be superimposed onto the gallery floor plan, transforming its square footage into acreage. The process would involve building our first models, and suddenly I had my justification for the carpentry years. The knowledge of proportion and construction needed to complete these models drew heavily on what I had learned as a carpenter. I found this to be a practical use of what I had learned during this time, but as our work progressed, and as we built subsequent models, we began to deal increasingly with the psychological implications of what I experienced as a carpenter. The content of our work became deeply intertwined with the emotional connections I felt to the spaces I worked in. In terms of carpentry, I always felt that my greatest teachers were long since dead, and I learned by tearing apart what they had built, analyzing it and attempting to reproduce it. But I felt them as ghosts too. I began to look at place not only for what it was but also for what it had once been. I spent many a day hammering away and daydreaming about the former inhabitants, all the while discovering clues that they had left behind. The house from "Farmstead", the first model we ever made, has reemerged repeatedly in our work and has become a kind of nucleus of our practice. I have come to understand it as an imagined representation of our ancestral home.
Two years ago I cut off the tip of my left index finger in a woodworking accident. I was building an access door for the whirlpool tub of a difficult client. This was a wake up call. Had I been working on a sculpture when it happened, I could have accepted it as a worthy sacrifice because I was doing what I loved. But I simply could not justify putting myself at risk on a daily basis for the sake of carpentry. So I began making plans for dissolving my business and looking for other work, meanwhile redirecting my focus towards my art career. I took a position at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design as a 3D lab supervisor. This year I went full time, which was a difficult decision for me because once again my energies would be diverted from the studio. But I figured that being at an art school would be conducive to continuing my practice and I could have summers as intensive studio time.
That brings us to the present. Tomorrow, Shana and I will be closing on our first house. We have plans for renovations that will take the greater part of the summer. So now I find myself once again with my energies diverted. The summer, which was supposed to be spent in the studio, will now be largely consumed with the renovation of our house. Granted, it is a classic Milwaukee bungalow, and I've always dreamed of owning one. We got it for a good price, and with the income from the renters upstairs, its cheaper than renting. And then theres the Obama tax credit... It makes sense for so many reasons. But again there is that nagging hollowness, that longing for the studio, that sense that this is just another diversion, a distraction from the real business at hand. So once again I find myself justifying.
My response is this: Shana and I have put so much energy in our artwork towards researching the psychology of the house and all of its securities and anxieties and yet we have never owned one. Just as my work as a carpenter has informed my work as an artist, I know that my experience as a homeowner will do the same. So I look at this as research in a sense. This blog is an attempt to conduct this research a in a more conscious manner: to fully acknowledge the potential of this experience to generate content for future artwork, and to help come to a better understanding of the work we have already done. So this begins as a blog about a house, about a renovation. But rather than posting about wall color choices and grouting techniques, I am choosing here to focus on the emotional and psychological experience of this place. Every house has a story, and every renovation is an uncovering of that story. And in my own course of events, this is the point where I finally put down roots. I finally have a small piece of this earth that I can call my own. I am for once grounded.
