The Tiny Cabinet

Hello to the Tiny Cabinet community, and allow me to introduce my installation. 

The centerpiece of the installation is a canvas painting I made that is largely ripped off from the Converse/Commes de Garcon Chuck Taylor collaboration. The shoe features most of the outline of a red heart, with the distinctive eyes looking through the canvas all the way to you. I took the outline of the heart and kept the eyes (the most important part). I love this idea--the eyes of the heart without a mouth, that we can see but never say what we want. In my canvas, there is the word "CAREFUL" written above the central figure of the piece. That is there for me, of course, but also for you. The more I am around writers the more I am reminded that I am not the only one with a big, fat, wet, heart. So as the love of my life and I decide if we're going to give it one last run in Tucson or call it quits for good, I am demanding my heart be careful. 

There are polaroids surrounding the canvas, all of Mount Lemmon. I loved the drive but I was tired of being in the car with my mother (we had just driven to Arizona from Connecticut). This trip to Mt. Lemmon might have been the only thing we did once we got here, we were just too tired to do anything else. And so when I see these pictures I think of saying goodbye to my mother on top of that mountain. Not saying goodbye like we did when she left, but the type of goodbye where it's the last fun thing you do before it's time to leave. I refer to this as the last good sip of soda. We'd spend the next days sipping at the bottom of the styrofoam, trying to suck up any final drops, but we'd already had the last good sip. 

Below the polaroids are two canvas panels, fun designs by my new friends in the MFA: the majestic and incomparable Nellie Papsdorf and Maya Bernstein-Schalet. I wanted to bring in something that I had not done but still meant a lot to me. Nellie and Maya made these pieces in my apartment the first time we met, and it is the opposite of the "careful" heart. These are the reminders in my cabinet to go out, make new friends, to live the opposite of carefully. It is much a command as it is a celebration of the people who are making a new home, home. 

That's my cabinet. I'll catch you around town. 

John