|
“You know,” he said, after they’d ordered coffee and dessert, “it’s all about abundance. I want my kids to grow up with abundance, and whatever is going on right now, it’s providing abundance in abundance. The self-storage industry is bigger than the recording industry, did you know that? All they do is provide a place to put stuff that we own that we can’t find room for — that’s superabundance.”
“I have a locker in Milpitas,” she said. ~ from Cory Doctorow’s novel ‘Makers’
In this second collaborative show, writer Amy Moon and I have chosen to individually explore hidden aspects of a phenomenon: self-storage. When something — like self-storage — becomes a ubiquitous part of our lives and our landscapes, we often don’t see it. By taking a closer look, Amy and I explore what our relationship to our things says about us and how that affects our environment. My practice of seeing what is hidden in the most common view is often expressed through my paintings. For this show I have created new work from the scenes of and around self-storage facilities as in the image to the left. Amy has written a series of pieces on the same topic. Similarly, her work focuses on the human needs behind this enormous, and yet, often unseen industry. Here is a short excerpt: I once had a boyfriend who was getting rich and starting to acquire expensive things. There were difficulties associated with maintaining what he now owned. In a rare moment of vulnerability, he said to me, “At a certain point, your possessions start to possess you.” So, why not stop working so much and acquiring stuff? “You get on a track and sometimes you can’t get off,” he said. An unexpected truth is that as tight a grip family or a lover can have on you, your things and your lifestyle can grip just as tenaciously. You have your business, your staff, your family and your things. They’re of a piece. To ditch one is to ditch them all. You end up continuing to acquire. And then you need self-storage. PLENTY HIDDEN
|
