A letter to Thulani
Greetings Thulani,
This letter will contain an in-depth description of our living/working space and also provide you with a brief overview of our relationship. First though, we hope that this letter finds you well and we send our warmth, affection, and good will. We are excited to do “art” with you.
The nature of this project: an active, transformative dialogue that engages both our physical environment and our relational topography, is in line with our operational philosophy. In other words, we are excited to work with you. We hope that this project provides insight into the nature of being. And if not that, then at least it will be entertaining.
We live and work in a storefront on Taylor St. a block east of Western Ave. We call it Fishbowl. We like our neighborhood. It is a working class kind of place where people hang out on their porches in the vening. It is diverse in both race and age. Approximately 30% Latino, 30% black, 20% white, and 20% Asian. The neighborhood is called Tri-Taylor and is just west of UIC Medical District and Little Italy. [West of Western we hear that life is much rougher. They call it the Wild West over there and it is supposedly not safe for white people.] Taylor is a mix of business and residential. Lunch time is high traffic.
FISHBOWL
Our storefront faces north. The entire front of the space is floor to ceiling windows with the bottom 2/3 clear glass and the top 1/3 frosted. The light is diffused and beautiful especially in the mornings and at night. [The space is 16 feet from one side to the other. I know this because I made a target and mounted it on the west wall and I occasionally shoot my bow in the gallery.] Along the entire length of the west wall runs a built out bench. It is around 1.5 ft tall and 10 inches deep. It’s a nice place for spectators.
The floors in the storefront are wood. We refinished them when we moved into the space. The boards run from north to south. From the windows to the back of the space is roughly 30 ft. The front half of that 30 ft is open space with 11 ft ceilings. The back half is segmented into 4 spaces: bathroom, galley, kitchen, and loft/work/studio space. We call it the Command Center and it’s where Lily spends most of her time.
The loft is accessible by a ladder. It comes down from a hole in the floor of the loft at a 45 degree angle, bisecting the storefront space. We can push the ladder up into the loft space which effectively opens up the entire 30 ft.
Currently we furnish Fishbowl with a furniture system that we built in our first year of grad school. We built the furniture with the intention of putting all of our material existence into a uniform geometric system. We built 8 (seat)boxes 12x12x12x12x20. These act both as a seating system and a storage system. We have 4 boxes that are 20x20x20x20x32. These are currently being used as a desk for Lily. We call these the book boxes because originally we stored all of our books in them. Then we have one large box: 80x60x12 that sits in the front of the fishbowl. The lid comes off and hangs on the wall acting like, but not actually becoming, a minimal painting. We keep our bed inside of this box. Therefore, we call it the Bedbox. Both the seat boxes and the book boxes are on casters so that they can be wheeled anywhere in the space. In addition, there are lids of various sizes that hang on the wall and can be removed and placed on a number of configurations of multiple boxes to make larger surfaces.
So in all we have 13 white objects of varying size. We built them with the intention of living inside a minimal conceptual system – something like a Sol LeWitt sculpture. The furniture system worked extremely well when we were living in studio and they mimic gallery pedestals nicely inside Fishbowl.
Besides the boxes, we hae two small matching couches that my sister gave us, a couple odds and ends, paintings that we use for decoration/justification.
We have numerous people who walk by the storefront and cup their hands against the glass to see inside and we see them wondering (often out loud) What is this space? Is it an apartment? A furniture store? An art gallery? There aren’t any hours, no prices, no cash registers.
For October, three local artists will transform it into a Day of the Dead installation/art altar. For now, it is clean-lined, minimal living space. We are posting our daily schedule in the window as a text/performance piece. This begins now.
And that, in a nutshell, is Fishbowl, the space.
Write back. Even just a note. With your favorite real writing utensil.
much love & affection, Lily & Beau
Hi,
Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.
Elcorin
hello to Lilly and Beau….today i am retrospecting some of my shows and i decided to read and surf some of the concetptual shows i have been. Thisone came up……i think it was a strong show in the initial exitment of doing something like this…the non-chalancity and happenning ethic that is so dear to both our work ethics……i ike the show…my ego..esp black ego was well exposed it it was necessary…..i felt initially like my idea was being co-opted like past ideas but then i realized about a week after the show i had that dilemma because i had aesthticized emotion……the climax of the show was probably the arrival of the Photographer Jim shobe….who is older then all of us but a serious photographer uin the classical nsel dams sense of that…..in a way he was representing me…it was a risk for me to do that and very last minuite but it seemed to have workded…….i was not happy with the intellectual conversation we all had….i felt…. my conversation was made to walk slow at times….but perhaps thats my ego…i elements of yr work and thats how we ended up having conversations …so there is professional mutuality….but the conversation was hard because i initially thought it ouwld just my perfornce on the phone….which it was but there were many problems i had with it….funnyenough…..i guess it was a happenning…..