DIRTY HANDS, AROMATIC HAND SOAP

meditating on 'warm spaces' and hospitality in the arts

W A R M S P A C E

Conversations, sunk into chairs

Dirty hands, aromatic hand soap

Vegetables, across a table

Windows open

Entangled views, and the interior

Attending to

Q U I E T L Y

occasional doors

and invitations’ invitations

I’ve been circumambulating around the power of hospitality, it’s coming up. (Or it’s always coming up when we are human and alive?) Putting it into words because a value of mine is warmth (specifically in working in the art field). This could mean noticing how meaning-making is better welcome if there’s a bench to park oneself on, a place to sit with. Love a chair in exhibition design. Or really any public space. A place to sit means there is an invitation to look at the world together. Cherry on top: a cup of water or espresso or something. An invitation of participation and observation, how tender!! I can imagine someone reading this being like, “what in the living daylights is she talking about?”. But even the most basic offer of a BEVERAGE makes someone feel seen and cared for. CARE is fundamental — I wish care could be better interwoven into every environment (cups of water, places to sit, snacks, sincere inquiry, feelings invited) ! Especially because the formal capital A “Art World” is typically by default or at its worst, neutral-seeming, cool, pristine, unaffected, and overtly masculine.

For my small birthday gathering this year I think I made 4 or 5 quiches with a pleasing homemade flaky crust a’ la’ Alison Roman, reliably. (Instead of her apple cider vinegar, I used this star ingredient herbal fusion vinegar from that really adds an earthy mineral nettled edge to the buttery pie crust. Unreasonable. I know 5 quiches is too much. Yet the concept that there would be a “quiche tasting” appealed to me as a fluxus happening, as a sentence, as an offering, more than the labor required to produce it. Illogical, you know, with two kids, juggling two jobs, home chaos (but the GOOD chaos). NONETHELESS, the 5 quiches were non-negotiable. (My therapist knows all about this inclination.) A part of my inherited love way, an expression of my creative life-force energy, a reciprocation of care and spirit, an inner child thing okay, okay, that. Update: made two chicken pot pies yesterday, had to take today for restoration.

Our society values short-term gratification, quick bites, hot takes, zingers, popping in and out, getting something and going, taking something and running, extracting, and an overall insane sci-fi velocity of production and consumption. This can be fun to toy with, spin that around, go long. Go fast, go slow. Write poetry, knife weed the field, chuck the phone. Go absolutely bonkers for 2 days and 24 eggs later, “working from home”

“just kidding”, cherishing the eventual gratification of friends relishing. The material sharing, the satisfaction of proof of concept. (By eventual gratification, I guess the gratification includes the sudden crumbling collapse, a sort of near-instant decimation of extremely laborious processes.) Kinda hysterical. Makes me think also of teenage boys WOLFING down hand-crafted petit-fours like godzilla wreaking havoc or something. Imagining this is a conversation people working in restaurants or food probably think about a lot?! And I KNOW I am totally diverting from my intention with this writing, yet the VIBES OF THE PERIPHERY ethos, is nothing is off-base. So, coming back to it— care, warmth, hospitality in the arts.

What started to flash in my mind while contemplating this is all the times I’ve had the spooky privilege to sleep with art and in art spaces! Attempting to list of some of the most potent memories below, but more exist, and I’ve probably repressed some— ha ha????

Sleeping with Art, Memory 1

Kristan recently reminded me that during install, we slept in “No Boundaries”, an exhibition PICA hosted of contemporary Aboriginal artists’ painting in 2015. (The reason for the sleepover in this instance was the security guard was off duty at a certain time so staff/ preparators needed to be onsite during install until the opening due to terms of loan I am assuming.) I vaguely remember sleeping on moving blankets, walking in socks to a bathroom with a mop bucket in corner, embodying the broom’s location, and intimately knowing/ scaling a sort of ramp/handrail to hang a painting high up. Those were such genuinely fun times, light in memory. Upon waking there was some journaling of a dream I had, intrinsically informed by the dot paintings. I want to believe the work in the show worked on my spirit in a deep and unique way not attainable through any other means but by sleeping with it….but now I just don’t remember the dreams and don’t know where the records of that time are, aside from memory shared with Kristan !! (And Spencer?)

Prince of Wales (Midpul), Body Marks, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 126.0 x 105.0 cm, 1999.

Sleeping with Art, Memory 2

A 22-year-old in 2011, I was interning as an Archives Assistant at the Robert Wilson Watermill Center archives/ office in DUMBO, New York and had the strange privilege of staying periodically in the Watermill Center’s mansion sort of massive art center place in the Hamptons. Heard tell of some drama with the gardener which intrigues me as an outsider. As a young artist and arts worker, this was a very formative time, because of the caliber of arts, and because of the total culture shock of being tossed into the very wealthy New York art world. I think the gardener and one other assistant were the only folks onsite, at the Watermill Center. I remember nights spent sliding theatrically on polished floors of long hallways in socks, past Paul Thek neon acrylic box sculptures cradling some kind of visceral dismembered hand. Pausing in my psycho trajectories, doing silent facetime one-on-one with the objects. Spontaneous yoga/ sort of haphazardly and honestly tossing my body around in the space, kerplunk. Running through. Running away from? Running to? These memories are more vivid because I have strange diaristic video footage from my mini-dv camera, proof. Buckle up, but if anyone from the Watermill team reads this, please forgive my sometimes eccentric impulses. I remember staring I think at a Sol Lewitt chair for a long time without much reference to his work. Also, maybe talking to the video camera, which makes me think a bit of early wave reality tv. I think during this time I was hired to help direct patrons to their seats for a Robert Wilson Watermill Gala, and there was an alien coldness and rudeness exuding off the body of the legend Marina Abramovic, I am sorry. There were performance happenings within small spaces and I remember a male stripper performance really making an impression probably because I never saw that kind of thing and trying to understand the layers of it.

Sleeping with Art, Memory 3

I used to sleep, cat-sit, and house-sit, in the unsanctioned apartment within Yale Union quite a lot, maybe a hundred or so nights there between 2013-2018? And despite the complex darkness and Trauma that occured within those brick walls {[(and far beyond my experience) or that of my contemporaries] during the hundred + year history of the magnificent and problematic building}, there were many meaningful moments and impressions of sleeping with art, eating with art, and incidents of what I believed or felt at the time was an emphasis on hospitality at the forefront of the mission. Thinking of Yoko, who I’ll always remember, signed her emails with the simply stated, “Warmth”.

Sleeping with Art, Memory 4

There was a time when I had the special honor of sleeping within the guest chambers of the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, doing a bit of registrar work for them. A tiny room with a futon and desk, with a window overlooking a rooftop sort of zone. I remember feeling self-conscious using oil pastels within the room because flakes of pigment were seemingly speckled on pristine surfaces in the guest chambers. I also remember the feeling of going to the more public bathroom within the gallery, emerging from a more vulnerable and private guest chamber—embarrassed. Yet very secure within the chamber, within the gallery, within the floor with keyfab elevator access, within the locked lobby. Deeply appreciative of a place to rest in Manhattan, whereas in every other New York trip I pretty much religiously stayed with Meredith in Clinton Hill. Missing Alan who visited me there.

So many more memories. Like sleeping in brilliant artist Jeffry Mitchell’s guest bedroom in Seattle a long time ago, a twin bed barely perceptible under a mountain of stuffed animals, is how I remember it. Or being Ellen Lesperance’s babysitter-in-residence during her residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin—ocean breeze, whalesong in the air, with spunky copilot “Yolks” her 3-year-old at the time. Playing in a dark barn where artists dance, moody in the library, pondering the significant toilets reimagined by David Ireland. And Headlands’ fresh baked bread, loving the observations like I was inside a snowglobe looking out at the world, or an alien. But an alien being offered fresh baked bread. These memories remind me a bit of those night time at the museum movies, or Toy Story…alive, wondrous, enthralling, haunted, a steward of the energy feeling.

Drifting, in this rambling meditation on care and hospitality in the arts, the Lumber Room is, to me, an actualization of this theory of a warm space. THE warm space I was thinking when I wrote, “WARM SPACE” the loose poem at the top of this meandering diary entry. Founder Sarah Miller Meigs and the gifted curators and artists over its many years set a very high bar for the marriage of a domestic environment and a site for distinguished arts and culture experiences. What comes to mind is the Donald Judd Foundation 101 Spring Street in New York— I don’t know if others will get that too. As in, what was felt immediately was the warmth of an inhabitable space maintained just enough within an open art environment. Ripe with potentiality. Flowers and food abundantly thoughtful and prioritized. I’ll miss what it was, as they are saying goodbye to the art program as it was, for now, but like many, I am looking forward to seeing how they will continue to live out their care for artists. Here are a couple poetry offerings I presented in projects at the Lumber Room over the years. I realized I never shared the poetry I contributed for Susan Cianciolo’s book!!

Susan Ciancio’s book This Cookbook Is Made For The 5th Dimension, produced by Lumber Room!!!

Honored to contribute to Susan’s book!!!

Performing rest in Susan’s exhibition at Lumber Room, pregnant with Isy in 2021.

Below is poetry commissioned by Lumber Room on the occasion of Israel Lund's exhibition, Apples (Upper & Lower)

Israel Lund

If compelled, please share your memories of sleeping with art or in art spaces, I am so curious to hear others’ experiences.

Lastly, I am running a special on my POEM TAGS—

FREE “COLLABORATE, DON’T COMPETE” poem tag if you buy any 2 tags. Until pi day, 3/14/26.

Love, Mo