If you’ve ever sat around wondering what it’s like to live with an artist who works with packing tape and wire (and I know this is happening in households across the universe even as I type) YOU ARE IN LUCK! Because I can tell you all about it. Before you get involved with someone like this, here are a few things you’ll need to know…
1. First of all, that distinctive screeeeechy tape-pulling sound takes some getting used to. You can hear it from every room in the house and it can play mind games: your brain is trained to associate this sound with moving, and you’ll be instantly filled with that horrible dread of packing boxes, schlepping mostly-meaningless junk to some other place and probably incurring a back injury along the way…until you remember that you live with a Packing Tape and Wire Artist (PTWA). You will sigh with relief. Repeat this cycle about 604 times per day.
2. There will be little pieces of tape Everywhere and always always on your socks. In fact, don’t expect that your socks will ever be tape-free again. Your son will learn how to pull tape off his socks at a remarkably young age. He will take joy in depositing these pieces in the trash.
3. Sometimes, you will feel strangely compelled to wear empties as bracelets.
4. Your 2 year-old might pick a piece of wire off the studio floor then bend it in half. Then he might hand it to you and say, “Please hold my art,” and run off to conduct whatever important business is next. When you tell your PTWA this, he will probably display it on a shelf in the front hall with a great deal of pride.
5. You will drive to Bushwick, Brooklyn to help install the work for a solo show and document the process.
6. On opening night, you will get to chat with people about this:
and this:
7. You will explain that yes, it’s all actually packing tape even though it doesn’t look like it. You will refrain from taking off your shoe and showing them your sock in order to prove it.
8. You will look across the room at your handsome PTWA and practically swoon. The fact that you get to experience this kind of thing with this kind of person, surrounded by this kind of art, would stun your high school self. In fact, it would please all of your former selves.
9. When you take your kid to see the show, he will think it’s completely normal for his dad’s art to be hanging in a gallery. He will surf The Cubes.
10. You will be very happy. You will want to share this happiness with everyone you know and with lots of people you never met.
On that note, if you live anywhere near Brooklyn, check out Rob’s show, running through April 19:
Here is Rob’s website: Robert Strati
Thanks to everyone who has come to the show already and to friends and family who have been so supportive of all of our creative endeavors!
