Haunts

About fifteen years ago, while number one was still a baby, I'd been working on a series of small paintings that I titled Private Property. The intent was to continue making work that spoke to my internal dialogue about physical boundaries in a metaphorical way, illustrating ideas about my sculptural vessels as landscape installations. Though I was aware at the time of the project's complexity on some level, it is with additonal time that I've come to appreciate more of its nuances as they relate to my history at large.

When I was three years old, my mother moved my sisters and me to her mother's home following what I've come to understand was for her an emotionally harrowing married life. Her mother's home provided a safe haven for all of us. Indeed, it was a home away from home for myriad people on an almost daily basis, as a private school for elementary age children. It's been suggested that there along with the many children of priviledge attending there were also children who simply couldn't do well anywhere else. It was an unconventional school and a stimulating environment with lots of animals, artifacts, and artwork in every room of its sprawling footprint. My grandmother's residence there had been allowed by virtue of her endowed principalship and willingness to make it her work-based home. It was a school and it was a home, yet it was neither simply nor wholly one or the other for me.

About five years into our now ten plus years here on Boxwood Avenue I became keenly aware that I'd been drawn to the property in most part because I'd been somehow familiar with its former use as a largely public property. For many years it was a bar/club downstairs, the owners living in a vast apartment upstairs; plenty of room for its family of four. We're five, and still, plenty of room, though our stuff takes up many of the corners that once stored beer. As an artist, its derelict state when I first saw it didn't deter my fast forming notions of how it could look one day. I saw it renovated, with possibilities for a studio, big social gatherings, lots of artwork on the walls, and plenty of room for sprawling teenage legs.

I believe that some homes have their haunts, and this one would illustrate that - there's energy still here from all those who stopped regularly after work for a beer, met with dates, or stayed a while to chat with neighbors. I can feel them more than ever before now that I'm just about ready to finish the renovation of what was once the bar. The as yet empty space between its new walls seems to echo with old conversations, shadows cast long ago seem to crawl against its corners.

It's not lost on me that my public vs. private dialogue is ongoing. There is some small celebrity in being here, and early on I heard many stories of its past from neighbors, passersby, and an occasional visitor seeking its former owners. This is undeniably my home, but the place is still very much the neighborhood's as well, and I would not deny that history. I've invited these people in during different phases of construction, watched their faces as they tried to reconcile their full memories with the shell of a room.

Long ago, before I married and had children, I made a spur of the moment visit to the old school. Though a Saturday, the place was bustling with activity, obviously an important day with parents and children milling all around. I approached someone to introduce myself, though I had no agenda other than the one I made up at the moment. That someone was, remarkably, a teacher I had known, who knew me and the special connection I had to the property. I was given a tour, recognized many objects between the building's walls, reconciled some of my memories with what I recognized, and felt definitely not at home. Several years later I visited again, just to show my children the place. No longer a school, the new owners had nontheless kept the original school sign, installed a plaque recognizing the building's history, paid homage to its former patron's memories.

Here on Boxwood Avenue, our big room will soon be receiving a different level of life than it's seen in many years. Its protracted days of being a storage area are at an end, and it's time to fill it with our own energy; time to put some private life into its public memory. I wish that whoever took the old bar sign off the place, just hours after we signed for ownership, knew that I'd be a sensitive caretaker of its history. Despite my many hours of painting a new coat of blue on the brick this past summer, I stopped short of painting over the shadow of where the old bar sign had been. As much a nod to the building's history, it was to my own as well, accepting and even celebrating a duality that is at once private and public, difficult and dear.

New Year, New Space

Our first floor renovation serves as a good physical reminder of all the worry, promise and hope I hold for the year. Though the room is nearly complete, still yet there are buckets of paint, stacks of wood, and miscellaneous tools standing resignedly shoulder to shoulder with walls just beginning to fortell upholstered chairs, cozy rugs, napping cats, and comfortable domestic disarray.

With all the hardest work done and the walls ready for decisions as to their final dressings, it is a surprisingly uncomfortable relationship I have with the empty space between them. I have courted its possibilities too long perhaps, envisioned them too precisely not to feel a disruption; I've made room for its haunts! The stories I've heard, the room's very public nature way before we ever knew it, have come to life now that life is back in the room.

The promise of renewed life in the big room is running paralell to my decision to rededicate myself to making art again. Stating this publicly is as bold a move as taking on a renovation - everyone can see whether it will move forward or not, there's no hiding the project one way or another. But I've decided to plug away at it again, take the chance that the vision I once held for my career might actually one day round its own corner out of rough construction.

The new year and the new space are both promising opportunities for growth; revisited, redesigned, rededicated.


PS - A future post might talk about how the public/private space issue is a recurring theme in my personal history, and why this might be.
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