STATEMENT
Right before my parents’ annual holiday party started, I decided to clean out the phone-book nook in the kitchen, just to unnecessarily worry my mom or perhaps fulfill some strange need for order before chaos. The space hadn’t really been asked to do anything but collect and be mildly functional, so digging through and behind its contents seemed a little archeological and a lot like undressing someone you didn’t really know but had seen around a bunch. And when the timing before the party got really tight (“Wait, where are the other napkins and why is there no soda on the porch?”), I handed a stack of knick-knacks and handwritten notes to Elinor, my sister, and asked her to find places for them in other spaces. She did so quite efficiently, without question, and later when the party was in full swing I tried to retrace her steps to discover her choices. I wandered the house as task-driven Elinor, wondering if she had tried to make them make sense, blend in, stick out, or if she had tucked them in another type of phonebook nook so that they would feel comfortable. When I thought about placing objects and pieces of text into well-suited spaces, it led me to ideas about sites of storage for my own storytelling, and those tri-colored-cake-cookies, because I had realized what art could be about, and dessert should always follow such a moment.