I was born in the dawn of HiFi sound. Somewhere in-between there were Quadraphonic speakers and Walkmans. Now I download my music digitally. I remember a portable stereo with wired speakers, carouseling turntable and the stylus resting in a grove playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “So Long Frank Lloyd Wright”.
Frank Lloyd Wright was a man who’s life mimicked mine. I am not suggesting in any way that I am in the same creative realm, I am merely bringing to mind that we were both born on a similar cusps of history, Flowing though eras, nearly 100 years apart. His time saw a Victorian era give way to prairie style, which in turn was traded up for the Bauhaus.
The pieces and artifacts produced in this series are intrinsically autobiographical. The silent valet and the telephone table have a redundancy about them, as do the Elizabethan ruff, and the bloomers.
The newspaper in which these pieces are made go more and more out of date the further we get from that point. The Boston Marathon Bombing was on the front page the day I bought the paper, and though the event had changed the lives of those closely involved forever, for the rest of the world it has become a low distant din.
Even the physical paper itself has becoming extraneous in the digital age. No longer does the joke “What is Black and White and Red all over?” apply because print and paper are themselves becoming passé. Finally, much of the knowledge that I have obtained though out my years has become insignificant, though it is not without it’s charm. Who doesn’t love a knicker, an ascot or a milking stool. I would have not made this things 30 years ago, nor been able to. But, just because the parasol was put out of commission, all thanks to sunblock, it doesn’t make it less beautiful.
