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JESSICA STOCKHOLDER: Can we mix 
some abaca with this yellow?

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Well, I was invited to make 
some paper here at Dieu Donne,

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something I’ve never done before.

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The experience of it is deceptively simple.

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It doesn’t feel highly technological.

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It’s also something that would be very hard to do

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without the help of the people in the paper mill.

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Paul has a lot of experience with paper

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and with all the techniques and 
the history of paper-making.

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The whole paper-making 
studio is filled with water.

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So it’s a very clean and fresh feeling.

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There’s a possibility nevertheless to make things

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that are bright and sharp and crisp,

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you know really plastic colored.

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You know part of me would like to make stuff

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that’s minimal and very well organized

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and neat and clean and quite comprehensible.

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I love the chaos, which is why I do it.

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I don’t make minimal controlled things,

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but I always feel kind of embattled

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and it takes me a while to really know

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which ones I like best after I’m finished.

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Cause I think there are lots 
of different kinds of thinking.

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Um, you know your hands learn to do things

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that you could spend a whole day trying

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to write about and articulate.

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What’s intuition?

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You know it’s a kind of 
thinking, it’s not stupidity.

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Um, and uh, so, so I think there’s a discomfort
associated with trying to um,

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put all those different ways 
the brain works together.

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You know so I kind of like to 
avail myself of that discomfort.

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You know I, Like being in the studio alone.

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I don’t like (LAUGHS),

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I don’t, I don’t hire people 
to help me in the studio.

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And you know when I do the installation

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I have to work with people to get,

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to get things done on time

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and to do things that I couldn’t do by myself.

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And in here I like to be alone.

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I, I mean part of the parameters I work within are

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that I can carry the stuff up here by myself

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and do everything by myself.

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And um, and, and it’s odd to be in the studio

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and not know what your going to do.

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You know it’s, I think 
being an artist and choosing

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to put yourself in a circumstance where

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you don’t know just how 
things are going to work out

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and what you’re going to do is uh,

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is very exciting and rich and also difficult.

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These pieces are more like pieces of furniture.

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You know they’re not furniture

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but they’re of the scale of furniture in the room.

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They address the architecture as furniture does.

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And furniture is also built for the body.

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And these are like that too,

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though they don’t serve any 
particular function most of the time.

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And I love plastic.

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I also just love color and they’re 
a really great vehicle for color.

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And they embody color.

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They’re colorful all the way through.

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Plastic is cheap and easy to buy.

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And my work participates in 
that really quick and easy

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and inexpensive material 
that’s part of our culture.


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In that way my work engages the means 
of production that we live with.

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At the outset, my work was about 
as nonverbal as you could get.

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Because I had two very verbal parents,

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I needed to find a place to kind of ascertain

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the nature of my experience 
that wouldn’t be argued with.

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To work with the physical 
world was a place to do that.

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But now having grown up,

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I find it interesting to put 
words parallel to this work.

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When I make these pieces I don’t 
have a, a literary story in my mind.

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I mean I’m thinking about what things 
are going to look like visually.

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And then afterwards can put 
words to what I’m doing.

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Drawings are a way of 
planning what I’m going to do,

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a way of putting myself in the space

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and thinking about being in the space

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and mapping out what’s of 
interest in the space for myself.

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Maybe they’re like recipes for action.

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In the studio I don’t have a plan,

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but for the installation work I need to

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have enough things planned
so that I can make use of the time I have.

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And then I feel sort of prepared 
to go and do the installation.

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But, but it’s always a kind 
of uncomfortable feeling

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because I can’t do any more work 
until I get there to start work.

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I mean this pile of light bulbs here,

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I’ve done that before and
have some sense of what that would be like.

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It’s a nice color.

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Lower, lower.

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All the way down.

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Right against here.

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There we go.

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Being responsive to what’s there.

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Or what materials we actually were able to find.

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The sizes of everything, 
what the colors look like.

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I mean it’s like setting myself down

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with a bunch of different 
color paints and starting work.

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Many things could happen.

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Went shopping last night to find something blue.

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You know I didn’t want another cooler,

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there’s a lot of colored plastic 
geometric shapes um, in coolers,

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but I’m using all those coolers out there.

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And I wanted something blue and plastic,

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something that had this color,
that wasn’t very specific.

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You know that was like uh, you didn’t 
right away think, oh it’s a....

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And this seemed kind of perfect.

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So I was lucky.

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Refrigerators and freezers, I’ve always enjoyed

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because they are the place of food in a house.

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And food and cooking has to do with
loving and giving in a family.

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But, but also freezers and 
refrigerators are cold and frozen

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and that has to do if you 
have an emotional mirror,

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that has to do with withholding and not loving.

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So for me they kind of embody that duality

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which is probably also in the gallery.

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The gallery and our institutions of art are both

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full of possibility and extraordinary feeling.

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And they’re also, they also 
put art in a place of remove.

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So it’s...it has less power in some 
ways than if it weren’t removed.

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In my work I’m interested in systems.

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And how things are geometric 
or systematically organized.

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How a thinking process can 
meander in unpredictable ways,

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in contrast to a system that’s been planned

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and that’s shared amongst people.

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I wrote a little text about this piece,

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it’s some kind of poetic text.

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Referred to the “Yellow Brick 
Road” and the Wizard of Oz.

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I think all of those kinds of fantasy fictions
have resonance with what I do.

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My work is about posing this
possibility for some other experience,

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world than the one that,
that we experience as mundane.

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Even while this is made of mundane things.

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My work’s really about pleasure.

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It’s not always pleasurable to make it,
sometimes it’s excruciating and it’s hard.

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And I think that pleasure matters a great deal.

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I mean I, I think what kids do that’s play
is a kind of learning and thinking.

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And uh, it’s, it’s a kind of learning
and thinking that’s um,

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doesn’t have a predetermined end.

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So I think that I’m involved in that.

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It’s an ancient technique.