Description

Room 3, Houses Installation “Three in One”

None of the houses have doors or windows. The big house’s identifying mark is that its chimney is covered in black bird feathers (the same as what is on the airplane in room 2). On the ceiling over the chimney hangs a large red neon ring, like a smoke ring hovering overhead. The two smaller houses are mirrors of each other, as if one is left-handed, the other right-handed. Through each little house runs a horizontal shaft. The shaft openings are covered with screening, like a small animal cage. Inside one of the shaft/cages is a small pair of woolen shoes filled with candy; the other shaft/cage in the second house holds some sort of egg/nest object. A little light in each shaft makes it possible to peek in and see the identifying objects.

These three houses resemble each other in the way that members of a family do. One is large and complex; maybe it’s the parent. The two smaller ones are simpler, still forming. All three have roles that they display to the audience; one is unknowable, one is dreaming of magic and fun, and one is disconnected, incubating its core. The room and the houses are connected together through telephone/electrical wires. The wires are clear (similar to the wires in the video that are invisable until the birds congregate on them, after that moment in the video you always see the wires) and integrate the houses into the space of the gallery and the houses to each other (with one house left out). The wires show us how the houses are linked; not solely by proximity, but by physical interconnection too. The houses form streets to walk through, and these streets emphasize the spaces separating the houses rather than the closeness of a neighborhood.

This sculpture is about the age-old struggle of families trying to truly understand each other.  We start out in life trying to figure out what it means to be someone's child, a challenge that lasts our whole lives, even after the parent is gone. As parents we want to be the nurturers of our children’s personal growth. The challenge is in finding a balance between providing them with too much freedom or stunting them with too much attention. In trying to fulfill these roles everyone is in the world is a little bit deficient, and that is a secret of Nature.  In ourselves and in those we love, there are more variables than we can ever account for. On street level, daily choices seem so important, so specific, but they barely register in the patterns of Nature.  We are like those tiny birds that that fly in chaotic beauty. We struggle through life as individuals, as children and parents without recognizing that we are part of an ancient pattern.  We all obey the rules of How Nature Works.