Thou art a Father

The process of being a parent has been way more important to my growth as an artist than setting and achieving goals. There is a primal power in parenting that affects us to our soul. As my son, Julian, grew, I began to remember promises I'd made to myself as a child. One of those promises was that if I had a son, I would help him make a tree fort. When my son was five, over a period of six months, the two of us spent many hours fitting scavenged wood to form this three-level fort between two giant Linden trees in the woods on our property.

I proposed a rocket ship built with household appliances. My son and I set about designing the craft, first on paper, then in clay, and then making a maquette to scale. The engine for our spacecraft was made of a vacuum cleaner, coffee urn, electric grinder, a hair dryer, ducts, fans and lights. Fog, generated with dry ice in the coffee urn, was blownout ducts by the hair dryer while sparks generated by the grinder shot out the back. All the gadgets were controllable from the cockpit. In this shot I'm struggling with the wiring prior to installing the engine on the craft.

My son had a major role in the design and manufacture of the spaceship and was credited as a partner in the process at the museum. Here you see him working on the body of the spacecraft. Here you see us taking a break with the maquette in the background. This is the finished craft at the American Museum with Julian, me and the museum's Director.