Observation is the lifeblood of my ideas. I’m primarily concerned with executing as many of the good ones as time allows. This approach gives me the freedom to attempt art on some mornings, and design on others.

I love writing and while I have too much energy to put in the long days sitting in a chair, I always wanted to build a writer’s cabin. For three years I lived in the mountains of Northern Vermont, a perfect setting to erect such a hut, but I never realized this goal until I left. The double irony of building it once I was thick in the suburbs, and furthermore placing it in a museum and gallery setting, gives the piece a comic spotlight not commonly associated with the autonomy of a writer’s cabin. And while the setting is equally as important as the foundation itself, the mystery and excitement of stumbling upon it seems to have the same effect under the high gallery ceiling as it might under the stars, somehow just as anachronistic in the former setting as in the latter.

The piece is inspired by the Godfathers of masculine literature I grew up on: Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, to others like Edgar Allen Poe who crafted a mood and tone as well as he created a story. I was also influenced by Van Gogh’s bedroom paintings in Arles and how through them he hoped to convey the serenity that the room actually provided him.

The shape of the cabin itself was designed to be an architectural icon, equal parts monopoly piece and “home” button on a typical web browser. I wanted it to be proportional, obvious, and honest, right down to the lack of trim. This detail is important to its integrity (structural and ethical) because the entire house is coated with rubber, which allows for no gutter or drip edge. Rubber walls equal no rot, therefore no need to keep water from these surfaces. Also nostalgic, the choice of the rubber was inspired by my hometown of Akron, Ohio, the rubber capital of the world. My grandfather spent nearly his entire life working for the Goodyear Rubber Company and I find the smell of the material as sweet as it is repellant.

The contents I designed in the cabin are, as Thoreau said, concerned with, ‘deliberate living’. Each artifact addressing personal needs with an eye on historic design, and always, observation. For instance, since heavy things are often associated with quality (a speaker, a scotch glass, etc.) what happens when you take a cheap glass and add weight but in the form of two cents worth of concrete?

The One Foot in the Ashtray piece (the black vessel with companion ashtray lid) also handles the stereotypical accoutrements of the writer with a sense of humor, albeit a darker one. The piece is a self-fulfilling prophecy that provides commentary on smoking through the choices of reflective, opaque black glass and a portly form, versus heavy handed design decisions that could be overly judgmental of people’s habits. It is a constant reminder that each ash they add helps to build their remains and hasten the time it’ll take them to get there. I want the object to have both a sexy physical appearance to draw you in, but the brains to keep you interested.

Just as my desire to learn the building trade years ago was a product of my blue-collar envy, the writer’s cabin continues this evolution of self-creation, with great concern for how best to tell the story.