i've never said this out loud before...

There have been a lot of questions lately about why David and I are headed to art school. For a few people (and that includes David and myself), it seems to make a lot of sense. We don't even have to explain; there is a knowing look, a confirmation, a nod that can only mean, "Yeah, I get you." But for the most part, David and I have been breaking out the allegorical speech, which, now in it's thirty-seventh iteration, is pretty damn good. Although it is a bit heavy on the logic (my opinion), it outlines our future interdisciplinary practice as the impetus for heading into Metals (Dave) and Ceramics (myself). Which is all very true. Yes, we want our work to shift comfortably between scales. Yes, we like furniture. Yes, we want to manufacture products. It all makes so much damn sense.

But there are some points that, for one reason or another (perhaps too tender to put into words?), we never seem to say out loud. So I thought I'd make them known-- right here, right now.

1 Because we don't know what to expect. Seriously, we have no clue.

2 Because we are beguiled by artists (and maybe even a little intimidated). If I ever ended up in an elevator with Donald Judd or Rebecca Horn (and thank god there will never be a situation where I would have to converse with both of them simultaneously), it would be way more than I could handle. I'd be unable to interact. Maybe David would say to Rebecca, "Your work is so graceful and lonely," or ask Donald why his Robertson heads at the Chinati aren't precisely aligned-- because David is brave like that-- but really, David, what would we say?

3 To deeply know our chosen materials. I bet it's a lot like getting married. You say, "I want to know all there is to know about you, and I don't care if sometimes you're ugly on the outside, because I bet you're always pretty on the inside."

4 To make. We are weary from toiling over paper, from the slow and compromising implementation of ideas, from watching projects fade and fall. Dave swears he is slowly being post-tensioned into the shape of a question mark. We want to stretch our arms, gather in material, and implement a shunt from our head to our fists. We want to (and I am borrowing from a wonderful professor of mine here) "work like bandits," charged by the energy of our hands.

5 To do something else. I don't claim to know much about Architecture (notice the capital A), although I think I know enough to get a simple building from paper to Certificate of Occupancy. So really, when David and I started talking about grad school and what it would mean to us professionally and personally (not a big difference there, really), we found that our fundamental questions could only be answered in an environment where a. everyone was a wizard at what they did, b. we had access to tools and materials we'd never had the chance to tinker with before, c. our learning processes would not be so linear, and d. for once, we weren't in the midst of so many architects. This narrowed our options down quite a bit, but in all honesty, the answer was Cranbrook from the start.

6 Because it's going to be so much fun.