FOOTPRINT

FOR MO FOR AS LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE + D.I. 9-7-79

   That instruction is typed on the top card of a mason jar containing a hand formed "turd" of wallpaper from David Ireland's house- 500 Capp St, SF. Every once in a while it "pops" from the pressure. I just got word that D.I. had died on Monday. Of course the jar popped. 

   I met David in 1978 when he was working on 500 Capp and I was stumbling around trying to figure out how I could make getting to know a 12 year old art. We clicked immediately. He let me do a church and a whorehouse in 65 Capp. I have the "65" address numbers. His influence on my work is incalculable. Recently I told him that. In typical Ireland fashion he told me how I had influenced him. The man was gracious to a fault. 

   David Ireland went back to school when he was forty. He started doing beautiful complex prints. Then cement paintings. He caught up with art history and started to make his own. In the late 70's he was 50 and well immersed in 500 Capp St.- a house rich in history and surface. He gently revealed it all and placed himself squarely  at it's center. He lived in his sculpture.

   With 65 Capp he took a totally different approach, transforming a sad salt box into an architectural beauty, redefining the rules as he went. But always, David's gift was that as artist, as an accessible artist, lacking in pretense and revealing in his role, and place in the world. You could tell it baffled him. It was contagious. In his words- "You wanted to talk and write dirty and felt you couldn't while your parents were alive." 

I will miss him mightily.

-MO

   

WSSP 2008

FLIP THIS ART

   In my practice, I've redefined many things as art. A cow, a church, a rock band, a school, a Thai boy, all fell under this rubric. But, to be honest, when I purchased WSSP, art was the furthest thing from my mind. I knew real estate prices were beginning to slip, but the bubble had yet to burst. I had just come off of a big house transformation up in Stone Ridge, for a NYC couple with deep pockets. And was about to begin moving GNJohn's ancient barn across the road to it's new home (see:watchthehousegrow.blogspot.com), and saw WSSP as a money maker. Buying at such a low price seemed to position me to attack it with labor and maybe 50k and flip it. Man was I dreaming.

   Take my word for it, you can't build a house for less than $150,000. A year into the process I had nothing more than a good looking facade. And now we were hearing such terms as "sub-prime" , gas was $4 per gallon, and house prices began a free fall. How could I get out from under this? My solution was to include WSSP in a show I was doing at Marianna's Apartment in NYC.  I had at least $75,000 in  at this point. And to my great surprise (and never ending  gratitude) the artist Samm Kunce bought the place, with the eventual understanding that the two of us would colaborate on finishing it as sculpture. The journey was just beginning.

PROVENANCE

As far back as people in these parts can remember, it was the Hunt Farm. Thirty acres of rock strewn fields, some hardwoods and a little one story house on a back road between White Sulfur Springs and Youngsville. At some point they decided to put another story on the old homestead. But instead of ripping the roof off, they cut the supporting 2x4s and jacked the roof up about four feet. What was an attic now became a full second story. You can see the cuts. A third of the house sat on a hand dug basement and laid stone foundation. The rest sat on the ground. Eventually they had TV, phone, a furnace in the wet basement, storm windows, asbestos siding, and concrete steps. They didn't have hot water, nor much of a place to take a nice morning sit down. Priorities.
In the early sixties one of the Hunt girls inherited the place. Erma Hunt married a Rozengrant. It was about then that they lopped off the house with a half acre of land. It became the Rozengrant house. The rest of the land was sold to Robertson up the road and then Peters. (My present neighbor.) They were dirt poor, but by all accounts the kids went to school clean. In 1997 Erma got sick and died. Soon thereafter, Mr. Rozengrant went to live with one of his daughters. I met him last year. He's dead now.
When i first started gutting the place i found dozens of putrid canned peaches, hundreds of empty dog food cans and quite a few religious tracts. It seems Erma was a practicing Baptist. It took two 30 yard dumpsters just to get the place workable. Not much was salvagable. But once i got down to bare wood I found old newspapers glued to the inside of the rough cut side boards. Dec. 24, 1899 was the oldest. Now that Samm and I are taking more of an art/archeological approach, we're saving everything. Yesterday I found a little gold St. Jude's medal buried in the dirt. "Pray for Us" was inscribed in the front. Amen.

-MO

RUNOFF

SK

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE.....

.....but none in the house. At this writing I have no well line, no plumbing. For weeks I've been trying to get the plumber out to WSSP and get a well driller lined up. As with many aspects of this house, I had no idea how difficult this could be. On the outside we're surrounded by water. Springs dot the hillside. A runoff stream empties into The Shingle Creek across the road. And every time it rains a little more real estate washes into the road. Oh, the plumber's wife has to have open heart surgery, while no well driller will touch the job. "Wires are too close." "Slope is too much." "Can't have that runoff going into the creek." "You're looking at $10,000...at least." It's back to the spring. And wait for the plumber's wife's surgery.
In the mean time, Al and I have put on the stairs off the porch and cut in the little loft windows. From the exterior the place looks amazing. But aside from electric and woodstove, we have no systems. The septic has cleared, but has yet to be tested. There's still more "earth art" to be done. I want to catch a couple of small springs with cisterns for the garden and put in more curtain drain. We are literally carving up the property in an attempt to divert the water away from the house. So far it seems to be working. I just got off the phone with the excavator. He says maybe Friday.

BUYER BEWARE

The first engineer I called about doing a site plan for the property said that. "Buyer beware." he monotoned. He said it was impossible on a less than a half acre lot to engineer well and septic. He said I'd bought a worthless piece of property. That was unacceptable. Needless to say I did not hire that engineer. The next engineer, who did do the plans wasn't much more encouraging. And he cost $2500. Almost from day one I knew this could be a terrible mistake. Not only did I drop 30k, over the past two years I have poured my, and now Samm's money into this project. Not to mention a lot of sweat equity.
The next stop was the NY State Board of Health. The man there was more encouraging. He gave me some key phrases. "Upgrading existing systems." he said with a wink. I told him a cold water spring line came in the kitchen..."That's your well!" he said cutting me off gleefully. I told him the septic was still a mystery. He didn't seem that concerned. "We like to work with people." He smiled, shook my hand and showed me the door. I went forward.

Looking back on this now, maybe I should've eaten the $30,000 and moved on. Naw.

-MO

IN THE BEGINNING

The project started with the purchase of 192 Midway Road White Sulfur Springs, NY. I bid $24,500 for the property. The winning bid was $30,000. But when that bidder failed to come up with the 20% required by the auction house, the property went to the next highest bid- me. With back taxes and fees, it came to about $30,000. This is what it looked like at time of purchase. It looks much different today. This blog will try to document this ongoing collaborative project between Samm Kunce and myself.

MO

WSSP 2007