Yeah, but space is an issue, you know? I’m even thinking of moving further up[state, NY]. Just driving until it gets super cheap, and I know people who have bought buildings for $7000. It’d probably require 20 more grand in work, but you can buy a big building, and start warehousing all the stuff up to the point that you could actually fill a museum. Then build a whole museum into a giant cave. Also, we have the issue of gifts. Every day we get gifts from people, and as you can see, there’s no more room in our house. The upstairs is full, the attic’s full, and the warehouse is full. Andy Warhol had the same issue. He would get all of this stuff every day, and he was a hoarder, so he wanted to keep it all. He also shopped every day, his assistants just couldn’t deal with it. They couldn’t move, but they came up with a perfect solution. They said, “Look, Andy, every week, at the end of the week, we’re going to make a box, and we’re going to take all the stuff from that week, and we’re going to put it in the box, and we’re going to write the date on it, and then we’re going to take it to storage.” They did that for years and years.
Yeah, I’ve seen some of the footage. The estate has all that now, these boxes that you open up, there’s a hand written invitation to a party from Elizabeth Taylor, or soemthing else interesting. We realized, when we get this stuff, people are giving us their art, their toys, incredible stuff. If you did archive it all, it would be a gold mine. Based on how long you’ve been in the fine art and art toy worlds, it has to be like a whole different world now than when you started. What’s different now than then? I think it’s a great time to be an artist. When I came into the art world, you came to New York, you took your art around, and — if you got picked up by a gallery — you could probably keep surviving. But once you made the rounds and if you didn’t really get any traction, if everybody said “no,” [then] you were pretty much done… for life. That’s not the case at all, anymore. It’s not the case because of toys, and skateboards, and clothes. You have more independence than you ever had
in the history of art. If you were an Egyptian artist, they said, “You draw your hand flat and sideways,” and if you didn’t draw it that way then they whacked your hand off, because you didn’t draw the hand right. They were slaves pretty much, right? Now, they’re entrepreneurs. You feel like everyone can find their audience now, so it’s a good time? Yeah. I think that some people want to get very far into the game very fast, and I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I think the way to do it is before you even go to a manufacturer, hand-pull stuff. Build up your audience, and then the people that have that, that’ll be their most coveted stuff of all. That’ll be the holy grail, your original hand-pulled stuff that you did yourself. That’d be the legendary stuff. is the way toys are perceived now any different? The toy world, it’s a whole different world now. The toys have influenced the art world. They didn’t start out in the art world, but now the hottest stuff in the art world is based on the toy culture.
BLACK RAINBOW STAR SKULL, 2015 30 | Clutter 30