Honesty is Valuable

HONESTY IS VALUABLE

today you’re going to make yourself something really nice

G G

A

Dimensions

A H

H

H

H F

B E

E

D

C

C

D

A

.75” x 1.5” x 28.75”

2

B

.75” x 1.5” x 12.75”

2

C

.75” x 1.5” x 16”

2

D

.75” x 1.5” x 12”

2

E

.75” x 1.5” x 11.625”

2

F

.75” x 1.5” x 11.625”

2

G

.75” x 2.5” x 11.625”

2

H

.75” x 2.5” x 13.125”

4

G

G

A

H F

B

E C D

BACK VIEW

Qty.

SIDE VIEW

C

3”

C

E

Assembling the front legs •Pre-drill two holes from part E to part C

as shown.

• Using the 1” screws, assemble part E

and part C

• Congrats, you might have assembled

the front legs!

It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.

Samuel Beckett, Molloy

The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.

Carrie Bradshaw / Candice Bushnell, Sex and the City

17”

A

A

E

Assembling the back legs • Pre-drill two holes on either side of

part E to part A as shown.

• Using the 1” screws, assemble part E

and part C

• Congrats, you might have assembled

the back legs!

Convincing the men at Home Depot That You are More Than a Twink and You DO Know How to Use a Hand Drill (Even if You Don’t) As you approach the lumber section of Home Depot, bumping your loading cart into the corner of the aisle, many of the men will hawk towards you, imagining you got lost in search of interior paints. Some of them don’t have Home Depot aprons, and you get the sense they don’t actually work there, but rather wander the aisles in search of affirmations. You want to paint your bedroom a nice yellow too but don’t let them know that. Tell them you are looking for framing lumber, to which they will point to the pile. Refer to anything that you’re doing with this lumber as a “project.”

Only look them in the eye, and try to have a sincere smile. Smiles are unclear for them.

Ask them to cut your pieces down just because you haven’t the space in your garage-studio. Your pair of Timberlands may be too clean and conspicuously a size too big, and the cuff of your jeans might have given away that you don’t do this too often, but the divine right to Home Depot is yours too.

F

1.5”

B

B

F

Assembling the stretchers • Pre-drill two holes on the four points

where part B meets part F, leaving 1.5” in the back part of the stretcher for the back leg

• Using the 1 1/4” screws, assemble

parts B and parts F

• Congrats, you might have assembled

the seat stretchers!

On Saying Fuck and Doing It In Uncertain Times (When you don’t know how the tools work) The day before your magnum opus is due, you opt to finally drill the legs of your chair into the seat. You’ve gotten coffee twice and cried once upon picking up the hand drill, and today’s the day to hunker down and do it. Talk to as many people around you about the 15-minute operation, have them tell you as many times possible that they have done it and it’s going to be totally fine. You stare at the two chair parts until neither is recognizable. You mark every spot you need to drill. You pick up the drill. You begin to drill your first hole. It drills smoothly and perfectly. You let out a deep breath, and your heart pounds like you’re 16 and a boy texted you. You drill another hole. It’s perfect. You drill another, God! Fear is so useless of a feeling! You turn the chair seat over, reveling in your success. You have no finesse for drilling. You drilled 6 holes through the top of your seat. You start screaming fuck at everything. You sit down on the ground. You start laughing. You patch the holes with wood filler and smoke a cigarette. You sand the wood filler and finish the piece. Your professor first asks what happened to your piece. You say you have no finesse with a drill. Everyone in the room shrugs and everything else goes great. It’s the best thing you’ve ever made and it has 6 dark brown dots on it.

C

B

A

C

F

A

Putting the legs onto the stretchers • Aligning the front and back legs with

the stretcher as shown, drill holes from part A into part B, as well as part C into part B

• Using the 1” screws, assemble A, B,

and C

• Congrats, you might have the

framework of a chair

Curbside Chairs, Slow Romance, and Not Using Designer Products The only good part of being an unpaid intern is that your bosses feel particularly guilty about the strange perverse labor system you’re subject to. So on your last day of work, they offer you a number of their products. You leave broke, but with several candelabras, coasters, and other accessories. They sit on your dining room table, and as pretty as they look and as prideful you get as you tell your friends about your designer candelabra (that you made yourself, perverse), you never use the damn thing. You pass by a somewhat dirty metal lawn chair on the side of the road near your house. The paint job is chipping, and the wiring is actually painful to sit in. Though you have the feeling that you are in love, but unsure who with. You put the chair in the trunk of your car and take it home. Nobody sits on the thing. It’s kinda short. It’s appearance is resonant of dust and sweat. In a last-ditch effort to keep the thing, you drape a greenish piece of foam over it. Suddenly you and the cat both love the chair, but in the way that you love someone who you can’t introduce to your friends. Your roommate brings his girlfriend home, and she loves the “contemporary design.” But you know your love is more expensive than that.

G

H

Putting slats on the frame • Pre-drill four holes connecting the H

slats to the seat and the G slats into the back. Align them as you see fit.

• Using the 1” screws, attach G and H to

the back and the seat

• Congrats, this might actually bear

some semblance to a chair you’ve seen!

There's a welcome mat at the door And if you come on in, you're gonna get much more There's my chair, I put it there Everything you see is with love and care It's my house and I live here I wanna tell you it's my house and I live here On the table, there sits a rose Through every window, a little light flows Books of feeling on the shelf above 'Cause it was built for love, it was built for love It's my house and I live here It's my house and I live here There's a candle to light the stairs Where my dreams await someone to share Oh, there's music on the radio And good vibrations won't let me go I put my name on the ceiling above 'Cause it was buillt for love, it was built for love -Diana Ross, “It’s My House”

Decorating One’s Own Home with One’s Own Creations In turmoil of our world at large, we have control over little in our lives. The smallest acts of control become more important. In Diana Ross’s It’s My House, she describes her every sensual decision when it comes to interior decorating. The act of decorating becomes a means of courting a lover. Her sensuous home, full of feeling and care, stands in for her. She projects this version of herself as to court a lover and to, in some way, court herself. In making anything, you want think of the sexy projective self that exists as the maker and as the object. To decorate a house with the objects that one makes is a game of fantasy. A fantasy that allows us, if briefly, to exist outside of the continuum of political, economic, and social turmoil.

Putting that last crossbar on • Countersink four holes connect-

ing crossbar D into legs A and C

• Using the 1” screws, attach D

to A and C

• Congrats, you made a Joseph

Kosuth at worst!

A

A

C

D

4.5”

C

D 4.5”

Politics are decorative.

Sciences are decorative.

Theologies are decorative.

The metaphysics of presence are decorative.

Decoration is communication.

Pure function does not exist.

Only function in context.

Communication is decorative.

-Matthew Sullivan, “On Decoration” Got on all my ice, talkin' cash shit Been ballin' all my life, Lamborghini's, fast whips She down to ride and deserves a boss who down to provide We run the streets but on G-5's, I'm talkin' fly Boots and blue jeans, Cartier, newer rings -Rick Ross, “Lemme See”

Luxury Items and When You Incidentally Make One A Trinity de Cartier ring, produced by Cartier, three bands, pink gold, yellowgold, and white gold, designed for poet Jean Cocteau. 18 K Gold, selling for a nice $14,000. It doesn’t on Cocteau’s finger. Utility dissolves, and we have the value and aesthetics of gold, of luxury and everything it dictates. Luxury supposedly happens when we pay for the idea of the ring over paying for the use of the ring. Who told me that this materiality, of Cartier rings made of tinted gold, was the apex of my pursuits? What’s a Cartier ring when I’m happy? What’s a Cartier ring when I’m sad? When does an object speak for you and when does an object stand with you? We are kept at a distance from the labor and the craft of it all, unable to see ourselves reflected in its marred surface.

Perhaps there could be a luxury that stands with you as well as for you. A chair that wavers with you. A chair that projects you both inwards and outwards.

Congrats on your new luxury For instruction help / design suggestions / emotional support / further endeavors, call or text (973) 715 5590