ABOUT RESTLESS SHELVES

     In 2000, I began to make hybrid pieces that allowed for and depend upon a different kind of exchange with my audience.  Restless Shelves—simultaneously furniture and sculpture—are conjunctive works in which a small carved sculpture is attached to the underside of a shelf.  I fabricate most of the shelves, but occasionally, I have purchased ready-mades from stores such as Ikea, the populist purveyor of good, cheap design for all.  I have invited people to select a shelf, install it at home or work, to “use” it, and to photograph it for me in situ.

     My project is simultaneously private and interactive.  Each Restless Shelf functions purely as a work of art in my studio, and is, as well, a mutable object in other environments. In the studio I indulgently cosset my ideas and carving skills into the often corporeal wooden objects that are affixed to the shelves.  It preserves my solitude and authority in the studio, and at the same time, requires that I surrender my control to those who employ the shelves. In my collaborators’ domains, these restless shelves might invite play, serve as altars and stages, or be purely functional.  This venture illustrates Marcel Duchamp’s premise in his essay “The Creative Act”, that a work of art is completed by the viewer.