Catalog Entry from If These Walls Could Talk Exhibit, Neill-Cochran House 2020:

A year before making this, I fashioned a vintage typewriter out of porcelain. Later, I decided it needed an accompanying box of typing paper. I had seen a book on letters between artists and was interested in one from Gauguin to Van Gogh that included a sketch of his painting. It was Gauguin’s Christ in the Garden of Olives, with Gauguin’s red-headed face posing as Jesus. Van Gogh took deep offense. This letter exchange was around the time the two artists attempted an artistic collaboration in Arles. The painting of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles became somewhat an emblem of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. There a writer could write, a painter could paint. Just do the work. Nonsense invaded the piece when I created the writing supplies: a pencil sharpener became Vincent’s chopped off ear. Then I realized the story of the agony in the garden also has an ear lopped off. Peter brandished his sword against one of the soldiers who had come there to arrest Jesus. More coincidences piled on, including the view out the window of the bedroom being a direct parallel to the striped graphics on the actual vintage box of typing paper. Here, for If These Walls Could Talk, the sculpture is simply placed on a secretary, a handsome formal desk for proper letter writing. It is odd but it seems at home here.