STILL LIVES

Stephen Westfall: "Yes, they’re real objects, but they are also tools that are essential to a more nomadic way of life. House, mirror, blanket, those things imply a more stationary, more introspective existence. Do you understand what I’m saying? And that struck me. I’m not even sure whether I’m prepared to make a larger connection to it, although it’s certainly intriguing. One of the things I find curious about art in general is, I guess, there’s a reliance on place.

Polly Apfelbaum: "Well, it’s funny, because the earlier work goes much towards the utilitarian. I think of the Indian objects, the ornaments, of the useful tools that have lost their meaning. And what’s left. I’m getting more domesticated as I go. A Dress of Many Colors, specifically, is about making an altar out of the everyday objects of our lives, from dislocated objects from different parts of my life. It goes back to a Tristan Tzara essay, 'When Objects Dream.' When objects dream, when we dream, things come together in strange ways, without surface logic."