In this space, I grow closer to my dad’s woodshop and the men in the construction guidebooks I admire. Engaged in the performance; on the precipice of touch. I observe the stills in the handyman books, frozen in time and absent in their momentum. So, I feed them -- with gesture, marks, tool, and machines. My insertion into a narrative that still feels out of reach. I take rubbings of the tools, a frottage of my hand and its body. The softest way to reproduce its shadow; catching its tactility, surface, and evidence of use. Asking for the tool’s touch rather than torque.
Worrying less about fidelity and more about feeling, I yearn to be invited to a woodshop, to be called a craftsman. To be called man. To be called man? The tool follows me everywhere, I keep it in my pocket like an extension of a hand. “The apprentice should make a habit to never lay the hammer down.” It’s about the choice, the conflict between the demands of others and my own desire. Sometimes you have the hammer and you decide not to raise it. Sometimes you decide to let it go gently, dropping its weight instead of leveraging it. Sometimes you work against yourself, your tool, your material, the world, and release yourself into exhaustion.