Normally on Fridays, Shana and I meet with our intern, Calvin, at the studio. We set up this internship when we had planned to do a major hanging sculpture for the Overture Center in Madison. But scheduling conflicts meant that the sculpture would have had to be installed right around the time when we would be moving in to the house. And the approval process took longer than expected, pushing back our start date to the point where the window of time for fabrication was getting frighteningly narrow. Renovating the house and building this sculpture simultaneously would have been a recipe for a complete nervous breakdown. Something had to go, and the paperwork on the house was already signed, so we postponed the Overture project for a later date. But we kept the internship anyway, figuring that it would keep us from being completely absorbed in the house project and neglecting our art career. As I am seeing the renovation partially as research for our artwork, the internship allows us to maintain a running thread of continuity with our previous work and keep the renovation relevant to our art practice. The installation for the Overture Center, incidentally, depicted an old farmhouse with its bottom falling out. The sculpture we are currently building with our intern is the same house presented as a sculpture being flooded by its pedestal. I promise to get further into the content of these works and their relationship to the renovation in future posts.
After reading my last, somewhat pathetic blog post, Shana in her infinite wisdom decided that a bit of triage was in order and she hatched a plan to kidnap me and force me to take a break. Unbeknownst to me, she called up the intern and cancelled our Friday meeting. She decided that she would put the bikes in the van and on our way to the studio she'd just keep driving and we'd head up to the northern Kettle Moraine for a day of biking, swimming and hiking. But when I threatened to go to the house early to get some mudding done before we met with Calvin, she was forced to spill the beans. Fortunately, I did not protest and despite a hiccup with a broken inner tube valve which put an end to the biking plans, we spent a much needed leisurely day swimming and hiking at Mauthe Lake.
On returning to Milwaukee, we paid a visit to Maurice Grimes, one of the sage woodworkers in my life. He treated us to Shrimp and Asparagus pasta and made sure our glass was always full. Seeing the lush gardens, collections and endless woodworking projects that engulf his 1872 brick house brings his character together. This is a man who has truly made his home an extension of himself.
Today I go back to work, and despite a bit of a sunburn, I'm not feeling the burnout... I'm ready to get back into it. It helps also that we've reached a turning point in the project. All of the internal stuff is done... the plumbing, the electric and the insulation... which means we are hanging drywall. The destruction phase is over. Its time to begin putting this house back together again. And this feels good.
