I don’t know when it happened, but at some point we started referring to the house where I live by its street address. It began as a convenience, and then it turned into something humorous. Soon, though, that humorous thing became real. It became an identity. From that day on, her name was Clarissa.
According to the date on an old postcard which had been mailed here, and which I found in the attic, Clarissa is 108 years old. But I didn’t need a postcard to tell me. Her age has made her moody, ruminative. I’ve learned how to recognize those moods, and how to ruminate with her.
Clarissa communicates her moods through color – which is not say that the moods are color-coded. Color, for her, is not just a coat of paint. It’s like a piece of wood: color runs all the way through it. Here, color runs all the way through the space. It doesn’t just sit on the surface cosmetically, as a sign. It is a material condition. Which brings it very close to a state of being.
So I think of Clarissa as a house made of color, as much as wood and plaster and brick. She is the color wheel built-out as a solid, in three dimensions. She is also where color finds a home, where it can stretch out as light, radiate from walls, collect in corners, scatter over textiles, jump across angles and planes.
These four watercolors have moved through the house , but also around the color wheel. That’s why they end where they began: peeking into the red room – which is to say, a room made of red, and redness.
Observatory Avenue 