Purpose Lamp

Sculpture
Chicken wire, coffee filters, squid ink, oil pastels.

I don’t know if people are supposed to be useful. But I am also against utility as something that is wholly bad, or inextricably linked to capital and efficiency for the market place.

For me it always comes back to tools. To a very well made hammer or pair of glasses. To objects that shimmer in their utility and intuit their jobs through their physical attributes. To a beautifully weighted pair of pliers. I believe in purpose.

A lampshade exists to do a job. It’s existence is justified in the specificity of its job and usually, it gets that job done. As is the case with homewares and appliances across the spectrum, they do their jobs in a variety of successes and failures. And if I were to define a lampshade’s purpose, it would be to filter light. How and to what degree varies, and the success of each individual lampshade is all subjective to its owner. Ultimately, one wants to make light useful, more understandable and less overwhelming.

A library serves a similar purpose. Knowledge, in its nebulous forms, is kind of like light. The cartoonish familiarity of a light bulb moment speaks to this well. Libraries, and systems of organization at large, do similar work to a lampshade. They attempt to filter and make understandable what is so large and bright. They make use of chaos, create order from disorder. This filtration of knowledge can be informed by bias and belief, but the goal is always towards utility.

I’d like to worry less about what purpose I serve to people, think less about how to justify friendship and presence, even existence. How I can be of use to someone, to easily fill some sort of gap, and instead be next to people with no justification or explanation. Just to feel thankful for a shared moment.