From the archives: August 2016
“You can’t make art by making art,” said David Ireland (1930-2009). It’s a rather interesting idea and an apt description for Ireland’s work on display at the newly opened museum 500 Capp Street.
500 Capp is a beautiful, white Victorian house from the 1880s. I’d heard rumor it was a museum honoring the former resident. One day out of curiosity I passed through the gate and climbed the steps to peek in the windows of the double front doors. There was a yellow glow and some old post-it notes and nothing else.
Signless-ness is a trend these days, but how do you learn there is a museum in the hood or that you need pre-purchased tickets to get in? A neighbor saw me snooping around the old front door. “It’s supposed to be a museum,” I told her. “Too bad,” she said. “It should have been turned into affordable housing.” Good point. On the bright side The David Ireland Foundation didn’t have to join the artists’ exodus to Oakland?
My husband and I visited 500 Capp Street without knowing anything about Ireland, thanks to a birthday gift from my friend Spring. We were greeted by two young and ardent tour guides who spoke with the kind of joyful serenity you only find in certain yoga teachers. Standing in a gallery space, we were treated to a performance piece that involved actively tape recording the sound of a butane torch and a question from that day’s Dear Abby column. The newspaper is stacked on a pile. The tape deck and the torch are extinguished.
“Welcome back” says the guide. “I like to give people a moment to re-enter after that experience.” I look around at all the other visitors and think, “Wait. What?”
We enter the home and I discover it to be all that I love: it is 130 years old with plaster walls that Ireland stripped of wallpaper, funny old light fixtures, and high ceilings. Ireland slathered the walls in yellow shellac. It’s like being inside a sepia photograph. The house is a living sculpture. Ireland wanted a basement so he dug it out himself, carting a pick-up truck of the excavated soil to a gallery for a show. (The earthquake retrofit was an important and challenging part of the building’s restoration.)
There is a built-in, glass front cabinet with balls of cement and a jar of David’s hair. There are mason jars full of sawdust from the sanding of the floor. There are simple arrangements of firewood and newspapers. A cardboard box hangs on a nail on the wall. More cement balls, wallpaper and dirt balls, wires protruding from the walls, incomplete chairs, more butane torches. The tour guides talk about any and all of it, welcoming questions and conversation.
During the preservation of the home, the builders were instructed to save everything. There is a legend that they protected a box of pebbles only to learn it was the litter box for the curator’s cat. Is it just me, or is the emperor looking a little underdressed?
My husband looks at me sideways. “You know who this reminds me of?” I do. We have a hoarder in the family. I imagine the joy and redemption our loved one would feel if he thought the saved newspapers, the jars of hair, an ancient bit of birthday cake (I’m not kidding: paging Miss Havisham) were cataloged and on display for devotees to view, guided by a loving narrative.
When we enter the dining room at the end of the tour I get my bearings again. The long, wear-worn farmhouse table with mismatched chairs is surrounded by animal skulls, old wooden sculptures of saints, and random signs. A string of dusty trout-shaped lights hangs from the ceiling. I am reminded of the homes of my mother’s creative friends. I have eaten in this dining room with zany women laughing loudly, staying up way past my bedtime.
When does art become hoarding? When does hoarding become art? Is it a matter of establishing a philosophy? Or perhaps it depends on presentation? On sharing instead of keeping? My mom has pieces of incomplete sculpture projects overflowing from her kitchen table. Nobody eats there, but she’s firmly in the camp of artist rather than hoarder. Maybe that is because I recognize sculpture as art.
There is a lot of emphasis in today’s design media on simplicity and minimalism. I like to say that design magazines are to clutter as fashion magazines are to body types. It makes me panic because to me I find it unattainable. Overly simple spaces launch you on your way, but rooms full of treasures pull you in and start connections.
“You and Thor kind of remind me of David Ireland,” says Spring. This comes up because I have a magazine picture of actor Kyle Chandler’s face taped to a full size Sawasdee sculpture in my home. Later on I text her a photo of some jewel stickers my daughters left stuck to the floor that I have no desire to remove. “Look, I’m David Ireland-ish!” She gives me a docent’s tour of her own home, dissecting the meaning of a paper heart garland affixed to the wall with painter’s tape. This is going to be fun.
I don’t think Ireland would overly mind that I am making fun of his art. I think he would be gratified that I am still talking about it. His work was so very random, based on ideas rather than skill. It intends to upend everything. I think you should go to 500 Capp Street because it stops you in your tracks long enough to notice the questions. Then please invite me to your home and show me your treasures.
Essay and photos by Hannah Denmark. All rights reserved.
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