It's made out of trash as much as I can.  First, it was post-Katrina New Orleans grimy, soulful, heart-wrenching trash.  Now I'm in New York so it's post-yuppie, no time to deal, shiny, un-loved trash.  Trash because it's cheap (as am I) and individual and not so bad ecologically.  People make stuff out of the things around them. Dirt (pottery) and trees and trees and dirt and rocks and such.  My dad was a marble sculptor.  He worried about running out of marble. Not so much good stuff left, at least not in the USA.  So I look around and what is there?  I live in cities and there's trash.  It's the new environment. Who knows from wood or stone any more?  It seems contrived.  But trash, ahh, that we have access to.  It's the new stone, the new dirt.

And as far as lamps and clocks.  I'm too guilty to make art for art's sake.  In wartime?  Really?  Is that what we need?  It's not like it's cave painting or interpretive dance at suppertime.  It's about money and need.  And if we are gonna buy a lamp anyway, or a clock, why not make it nice, so it doesn't end up on the manhattan sidewalk a year later when the lease is up?  If it's nice maybe someone will keep it, and keep it out of the landfill. 

Craft.  Artisan-ship-ness.  The lines between art for art's sake and something serving a purpose besides that (during wartime...).  Hard not to slide into defending the role of the knowledge of hands, of making, body skills.  We need a lamp, a clock.