A draft invitation for In-residence Residency Living (IRL)
“A system that understands that a home is the locus for human life….
for artists who create such systems, the fundamental art is not the object
but the network of principles that support it. At it’s best, the art object is
an expression of these principles…”
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Ross Simonini for Susan Cianciolo. Warm Home Energy,
This Cookbook is made for the 5th Dimension. Lumber Room.2021
Anyone that has lived with me, worked with me, and even knows a little bit about me, understands my love for systems. These systems are less like the cold systems of efficiency, and more like rituals for living. The Heath ceramic compost bin, the eucalyptus in the shower, plants in every room, early morning walks with Enzo, chamomile salve for my feet, sleepytime tea right before bed, and a stack of epson salts next to the bathtub.
I live in one of two units of an old farm house that was built in the early 1900s. The ceilings are fourteen feet high with transom windows above each doorway. The floors are beat up fir, with carefully selected rugs covering the blemishes protecting your feet from splinters. I have repainted most of the walls Benjamin Moore Cloud White and turned one of the three bedrooms into a living room with one whole wall covered in chemex coffee filters.
My friends’ art covers the walls (and floors); there is usually some type of tincture or fermentation happening on the kitchen counters and dried herbs hanging in the six feet tall windows. There is a wood drying rack for my clothes that rotates around the house and I have made canvas curtains that go all the way to the ground. Plants are in almost every room including a giant ficus tree that I have managed to propagate into nine more plants and a caucus that is now five cacti. Over the pandemic, my dining room became a ceramic studio and the foyer a publication studio and library...
For me there is no real separation between making a home and having a studio that supports a creative practice. The ecology of my home is my creative practice.
In Residence Living, (IRL) is a social sculpture, an idea, not only for sharing space and resources but also to identify and understand basic needs and self-limitations—new ways of making toward an ethic of care; the way we care for ourselves, our things, and one another. With this in mind, the primary goal of IRL is to create space for discussion and experimentation through the art of living.
On the weekends, evenings, for two-weeks, for a month or two, I am excited to invite folks into my home to make things and talk about the things we make. To dream and scheme about what we want to make together and on our own. To eat together, go on walks, sit silently with one another, and to have deep conversations, late night debates, and deliberations...
Whatever is created as a result of IRL I imagine at the very least it will be a form of solidarity—friends in action. The space and things created will be a self portrait and a portrait of the persons with whom I share space and time. And, in these two portraits, I hope to experience a profound kind of conviviality.
Join me