Monthly Statement:
December 2005

OBJECT # 16
DATE SENT: December 31, 2005
SENT TO: Leslie Kippen
SENT VIA: Hand delivered
DESCRIPTION OF OBJECT: Electric analog clock, made by Hammond, model type Synchronous, electric cord has been severed. Clock face is cream and silver in alternating concentric circles with black numerals and black minute dots. The hour and minute hands are black and the sweep second hand is brass, all in a gothic style. The face surface is cracked. The clock is approximately seven inches in diameter and two and one-half inches thick. The face also contains a smaller dial that measures three minutes. It has one hand and half-minute increments in black with the numerals 1 and 2 printed in. The hands of the clock are fixed at 11:01:07 and the smaller clock’s hand is just past the 12. The clock is silver sided, seven ridges made from aluminum or polished brass, which is tarnished and pock marked. The back is also aluminum, but rather tarnished or dirtied with what might be kitchen grease. There are two knobs. One to “set time” which is inscribed, the other “to start” to set the clock in motion, a kind of jump-start. There are three holes in the outer edge of the back and one other exactly on the top for mounting. A black plate on the bottom is inscribed with HAMMOND, Hammond Clock Co., Chicago, IL, and the guarantee and serial number M 40 as well as other information obscured by dirt and grime.

ORIGIN AND APPROXIMATE DATE OF POSSESSION OF OBJECT: Purchased at a yard sale in approximately 1982 in the suburbs of Rochester, NY.

MOST RECENT LOCATION OF OBJECT: In a cardboard box on top of a metal shelving unit which is to the immediate left of my studio door, which faces north.

RELATION OF OBJECT TO RECIPIENT: Leslie and I had been dating for about a year when I left Rochester after finishing graduate school to find my way as an artist and teacher. I bounced around California, New Jersey, the Adirondack Mountains, and back to Rochester before landing in Akron, Ohio, and a part time teaching job, which Leslie had arranged for me at the University of Akron. I returned during the early fall to Rochester to visit Leslie and one afternoon we found ourselves at a yard sale in the suburbs of Rochester. I have usually been reluctant to purchase things, but this clock, with its relatively simple and 50’s-ish design, seemed the perfect thing for me. Leslie encouraged me to get it. I put it up in my kitchen in Akron, then in my first apartment in Jersey City as well. In 1984 Leslie and I moved in to an apartment in downtown Jersey City and I put the clock up in our kitchen where it remained for many years. We lived in this apartment for sixteen years, before we purchase a home of our own in 2000. The year before we moved I painted the kitchen, reluctantly, since we were having a conflict with our landlady and I didn’t know how much longer we’d be living there. It was a great apartment that over-looked a park square, and though Leslie refers to it as a closet, I have some warm and fond memories of living there. The clock was removed from the wall prior to my painting the kitchen and the wires that connected it to power had become frayed and unusable. The clock has never been mounted in the kitchen of our home. Its hands are fixed at 11:01:07, time standing still, at least in this particular instance.

RESPONSE OF RECIPIENT(S):

DATE OF RESPONSE:

Process: My plan is to de-accumulate objects I now own during the course of the exhibition year. I will photograph the selected object then send the object with a letter to a person who has some relationship to the object or whom I think might be interested in the object. The letter will discuss the project and tell the receiver they can keep the object, destroy it, give it away, recycle it or anything else they choose. I will ask them to document it in the place they now have it and send their image and/or written description back to me of what they did with it and where it is. I plan on de-accumulating an average of one object per week. The new images/descriptions will be placed in a plastic folder and exhibited along with a photograph of the object as it was in my possession.