my garage, my bookcase, my boxes for charity

I have spent 2 hours a day for weeks now cleaning the garage. Dean is someone who holds tightly to the past. I threw away receipts from the 90’s. Birthday cards from ten years ago. Scraps of paper. Nib nabs. We bought two bookcases from IKEA — the blue Billy case with glass doors and set them up in the home office. Dean has acquired easily $20k worth of art books. The entire Ed Ruscha catalogue raisonè. Now when I’m working I can take a break and look at some art from the literal library we have now. It actually smells of books in here. We have, however, no books by two of my favorite artists: Jenny Holzer and Douglas Coupland. Both artists work with words. Coupland is also a famous novelist having coined the term “Generation X” as the title for his novel in 1991. I had the honor of meeting him in Vancouver in 2002 and wound up having dinner at his house. Here’s the link to the entry I wrote about it way back when. He made a centerpiece out of gourds with colored pencils stuck in them, binding them together like the model of a molecule.


Jenny Holzer, the better known “word artist” is someone I’ve been fascinated with since probably the first time I saw one of her pieces in New York. It was from her series of inflammatory statements — I’m guessing this was around 1982. It remains really relevant. Maybe more now than when it was first written? Holzer is someone who’s work isn’t always esthetically pleasing. Coupland’s stuff looks great. With Holzer it’s the idea that is the art. She posted these around NYC but they were also sold in galleries. You see a lot of her work displayed on LED signboards — like what you would see at a bus stop. A few years ago they had the Frieze art fair on the Paramount lot and I spent a good half hour in front of a scrolling LED reading her works until I started to get vertigo.


Dean has a Holzer shirt that he got for donating artwork to Planned Parenthood that reads “THE ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.” The font is printed out of focus so you can only read the shirt from a distance. When you get up close it’s too blurry. I covet this shirt. I don’t dare wear it though because it’s a white T-shirt and I will ruin that thing in 2 seconds. I will spill or fall or somehow mangle the shirt. He’s set art traps for me all over the house. We have this small sculpture of dish sponges made out of balsa wood by this artist George Stoll. It’s cute — and they look like real dish sponges. Anyhow, that thing is hanging precariously on a single nail and one time I brushed up against it and they fell off the wall and one of the corners of the sponge was dented in. I hung it back up hoping that he wouldn’t notice! He didn’t but then he invited George Stoll over for dinner and he sure as fuck noticed! So busted.

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February 1, 2021

That’s great you have art books. 🙂 They are fascinating eh?

 

February 1, 2021

@sleepydormouse 📚📚

February 1, 2021

You have art books and I have cooking books….I think it’s cool how people collect things and never want to give them up.

February 1, 2021

@jaythesmartone yep! What is/are your favorite(s) cookbooks?

February 1, 2021

@bitterpill

I have so many I have used them all at one time or another and most of them are in totes.