“Bob’s sinks are now selling for hundreds of thousand of dollars!”This was Saturday afternoon lunchtime conversation, a mother boasting about her son to old friends and now one new acquaintance (me). But an audible question mark in her voice hinted that she might not fully understand just what Bob actually did, or why anyone would pay so much money for his ”sinks”. Naturally, I was intrigued, but perhaps because I was both the newest and the youngest member in this group I remained silent as the conversation moved on.
A few years later at a similar gathering, I was lucky to have Leah speak of her son with pride once again.
“Bob has a new installation, and it is going to be at the Dia in New York.”
This time I was comfortable enough to ask the right questions, to get the where and when details. I now knew I had to schedule a New York weekend, seek out this “Dia” and see for myself what $100,000 sinks looked like; especially in an installation.
Back in high school, I had somehow managed to arrange my lunch, two study periods and my actual art class all in a row, so that three times a week, I was in the art room for more than half the day. A lot of my time was spent making drawings and paintings and occasionally clay sculpture. Sometimes, our teacher would tell us about the famous contemporary artists of the day. But if installations were part of the art-vocabulary in my rural town, I was absent that day.
Seems absurd that it took till 1993 before my first time.
