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Description
The work in Access: Pending investigated the way a door moves through a cabinet, and how this seemingly simple act can be suggestive of how people interact with each other. This exploration stemmed from a fascination with the way people negotiate relationships with others. This deep-seated interest in interpersonal relationships came from watching my divorced parents navigate their new and very different interactions with one another as well as with their new spouses. Growing up is hard sometimes; especially when we navigate relationships we feel strongly about and have no experience in dealing with the emotional rollercoaster that inevitably comes with them. Having a person in my inner circle like my stepmother, a psychologist, has been especially helpful with regard to understanding my own sensitivity to relationships with others. This keen awareness of interpersonal relationships dovetailed with my interest in furniture making in a very productive way. Gaining access to the interior space of a cabinet and how we do so is analogous to how we gain access or acquire familiarity with ourselves as well as with another person. When I make furniture I often include a technical challenge I have never attempted before, and in this work I experimented with the use of the tambour door. This method has a long history, first being used in the 1760s, but has since become more rare in furniture. The tambour door is made of a series of slats that travel along a track, and is distinctive because its track can curve. It is prominent in my thesis work because of the potential it has to convey meaning. This unique door travels through interior space like a train down a railroad track or a river across a landscape. This reaction to a path is similar to the way we react emotionally to the world as we move through it. In the piece titled Rollercoaster for example, the rise and fall of the door as the user pushes it up to where it then free-falls is inspired by emotional highs and lows of praise and criticism. We meet people and negotiate situations all the time, and by thinking about these doors in this way, I began to explore how they could act as metaphors for aspects of relationships we all have with one another and ourselves. Access: Pending represents my exploration of these ideas over the past year. The seven pieces that made up Access: Pending were exhibited in the Everett Gee Jackson Gallery at San Diego State University from April 21 through April 25, 2012.
