“Let’s Have a Drink”
In 2016 I made a work where I drank a thermos of coffee sitting on a chair I built and installed on the wall in the main hallway at Tyler School of Art, next to a painting on RealTree fabric with words taken from a letter sent to me, wearing a hand sewn camouflage suit. Eventually, the objects from the performance were installed in the Painting department lobby in about 2017, where it then sat semi-permanently installed for 5 years.
In 2022, I took a job at Tyler School of Art and found my artwork still hanging. I (finally...) deinstalled the work and broke down the chair for scrap wood. I milled that wood and used it to make the cradles for a set of panels I had made, which eventually became “No More I Love You’s” and “Plymouth Hypnosis Center”.
(In historical art carpentry and conservation, panel paintings would be attached to cradles with the intention of keeping the surface flat and resistent to change from temperature, humidity, and age. They are necessarily beautiful and vernacular designs.
Being permanently affixed to the panels, the cradles prevent the natural movement of the wood. When tension is applied through temperature changes and moisture, the surface of the wood must split and crack along the cradles tension points. The painting splits, and the structure which holds it together and breaks it apart begins to be seen through the cracks.)