30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 27

In the window, Erica and Samantha. I know Erica from church and related activities... Erica and Samantha work together. They seem like easy friends, the kind that grow together quickly and enjoy each other's presence and empowerment.

For dinner they ordered sandwiches from the pizza place across the street. There was a large time-gap between their expected food pickup and the actual time it was ready. During those twenty-or-so minutes I was able to talk with Samantha about the piece and her personal/artistic interests. Considering how late it is into the month, our conversation felt like a test run for re-entering the normal pace of dialog with a stranger (instead of watching them from the other side of a window, which I'm certain won't fly in other contexts).

Along with their food they brought an ipod and speaker dock. As soon as their quick meal was eaten, they folded up the table and chairs, put their things off to the side, and picked a tune. Then they proceeded to start a two-person window dance party. They continued picking songs and dancing until the end of their hour, quite a thing to watch.

This is the first night where the participants became overt and intentional performers. On one hand it felt as though they danced for themselves, not always facing out but instead laughing and focused on one another. On the other hand, they would fall into moments of outward focus... playing the roles of mimes in a box (though they actually were in a box this time) or doing the Rockettes line kick. I suppose this follows suit with many forms of dancing: simultaneously a personal expression and entertainment for others.

They had a good amount of sit-down-stay-a-while viewers to observe their dances... which created the feeling of watching gogo dancers locked in a box. It's incredibly awkward to sit still while watching two people jump and kick and laugh... all to music you can't hear. This disconnect of physical movement made me feel like they were very far away... people from a different place performing a strange ritual of that I couldn't enter. In this dinner time more than any other I felt my obligation as Viewer to their Entertainer, and distinctly encountered the divide that separated their world from my own.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 26

In the window, Jason and Jennifer, husband and wife extraordinaire. Jason is a fellow U of C MFA-er and Jen works long hours at a not-for-profit in Chicago. I was also given the good fortune of photographing their wedding last year which was a real delight.


For dinner they brought a variety of snacking foods, surrounded by a much loved container of hummus. They drank orange juice with the food, and while it looked like a snack meal, it felt incredibly healthy. Their dinner seemed to revolve most around their game of Scrabble. Based on the board they brought and the posture they held throughout the game, it was obvious this was not an isolated event in their lives. In fact, with this dinner more than any other, I felt as if this is actually what they would be doing at home during dinner time...as though the gallery was just a large window looking into their living room.

In spite of the comfort in their actions, it seemed they were keenly conscious of themselves as being on display. I gathered this from nervous laughter and the way Jen's foot never stopped shaking, tapping and swinging. Then again, those gestures could have easily been natural to their demeanor, speculation abounds.

A man with his baby came out to see the piece for a while. The little boy was on a push cart controlled by the father, so there was never a moment where they stood still on the sidewalk. It felt like speaking with a circling shark, only this shark was being propelled by his son's need to keep moving, not his own. Toward the end of their time with me the father spouted, "It IS art" as if to convince me of the fact. Like I have so many times before, I asked him why he thought so. He said "because it makes me think of other things, like animals at the zoo... and prison."

Not to say I fully understood his logic for that answer, I was interested in where he landed. Further explaining to me, he had spent time locked up on a an assault charge as a young man and there met men who will never be released as long as they live. He recollected the contrast of living life in a way that you are always in view but never actually seen; intensely observed but totally ignored . The place where privacy is abolished and yet everyone is forced to exist in isolation. It was a sad but potent image that I hadn't seen. His experiences gave me a new and pained way of seeing the piece in response to the way many may see their lives, in a physical prison or one made of more silent but equally strong bricks.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 25

In the window, Josh and Charline. Josh and I met in a totally unexpected and spontaneous way: a conversation at our shared laundromat (one of the many reasons I love Chicago). He listened to me go on and on about this piece and decided to participate. Josh's original dinner companion was unfortunately unable to attend, so Charline, another of his friends, stepped in to fill the role. May the reader note that Charline had a baby four short months ago who was at home... she looks stunning if you ask me.


For dinner they brought cuisine from Sultan's Market, a bottle of red wine and a large bottle of water to share. Part of the way into their meal it appeared Charline was not so fond of her food and asked to try Josh's. If memory serves me, this is the first time an overt food sharing gesture has occurred. She found his much more pleasing and traded for the rest of dinner, another first.

They also chose to sit on the floor of the gallery, picnic style. They told me afterward that this had to do with the length of the table. Intentionally designed to create more space than normal between the participants, the table has never repelled others from using it before tonight. If anything, pairs have modified themselves to suit its demands. Chris from Day 20 called it the "magically shrinking table", as their conversation became more focused the space between them fell away... but the distance was very much there to start. Josh and Charline are the first to refuse the furniture template regardless of their ability to conform to it.

As they talked, ate and wiggled around inside the window, conversations were happening outside in much the same way. Susan, my friend who participated in Day 2, stopped by to see the piece with her two pet geckos (in a box). A set of siblings sat for quite a while, one a Junior in high school and the other a 7th grader. The four of us talked about many things that kids that age deal with: school, establishing habits and identities, the future.

Susan seemed surprised that we talked so little about the dinner in the window, actually. She recalled from her own dinner experience the subtle but persistent feeling that everyone was analyzing her from the outside. After all, she was the art. Of course there are conversations and entire nights where the diners take center stage but that isn't always the case (apologies for let out the apparently well-kept secret). Like most forms of creative expression (visual art, theater, film, music), the end result of the gesture is intended both to be lovely AND to stimulate and motivate exchange.

The kids who stopped to talk may have first been interested in pet geckos or staying longer in the warm weather, but they stayed because they were given a place to see and speak about themselves in the reflection of something else. The art talk came toward the end of the conversation... and it wasn't formed around dialog speculation or academic rhetoric. Instead it was tailored to their needs, to the idea that things aren't always what they seem, that it's okay to sit communally before an idea and be pleased with its ability to liberate.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 24

In the window, Charina, Junito, Candido, Lucy, Scrappy and the man Nate and I refer to as the pizza boy. The first four people in that list are family members from the neighborhood. Scrappy is their petite dog and the pizza boy is a man who arrived mid-dinner with a pizza and stayed for a while.

Lucy and Candido brought Puerto Rican food and started their dinner time together at the table. At their feet a "Cooking for Two" book faced the window as a gesture toward their current Empty Nester status. After some time their adult son joined them for dinner, sitting with his dad at the table. Whoever was eating sat at the table and the other(s) rotated to the floor.

A few minutes later their adult daughter and Scrappy came in, parents now sitting together on the floor and children eating together at the table. Lastly the pizza boy came in with his gift to the family, shook hands and joined the daughter on the floor while dad and brother sat at the table and mom stood on the other side of the window. Before the night ended, all the "children" left and the parents were left together again in the window. The Cooking for Two book had been flipped upside down while the family was with them, but returned to it's upright position when man and wife were alone together again. This gesture was very important to Lucy, representing their lives through symbol to the viewer.

This dinner has been scheduled since the first week of the piece and I've been looking forward to it immensely. This version did a wonderful job expressing the multi-person family unit, dinner time that is broken into rotations for convenience and necessity, and the organic nature of certain groups and cultures inside the act of eating. In this dinner there was a continuous act of giving for your other... giving up your turn at food so someone else could eat, standing while someone else sits, becoming smaller so the other has more room to be big. It's the image of a real and loving family.

This was also the first night that I was not present for the piece. I had a job to do in the evening so Nate filled my shoes, as the good husband he is. For the first time in almost a month, I am looking at the piece the same way my facebook fans are. Not as viewers on the sidewalk nor as participants in the window, but as a second hand viewer. I saw this night through the eyes of Nate, much the same way you have seen the previous 23 days through my eyes (unless you were there in person on a given night).

This makes me want to encourage everyone to come out before the last night (May 30). While I'm trying to see the piece clearly, it's only as good as my vantage point. I have been really altered by spending time with this concept and gesture, but only insofar as I am able to be personally moved (as is the case with all art). You have a different set of eyes to see through, and I need you in order to see my own work more fully, as it ought to be seen.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 23

In the window, Gloria and Nate. They have both had dinners in the window earlier in the month with other companions. The scheduled pair cancelled earlier in the day for their slot, so Nate and Gloria stepped up to save the day. Nate is my husband and Gloria is our good friend and across-the-hall neighbor. We've been friends with Gloria almost as long as we've lived in Chicago, about 3.5 years.


For dinner Nate packed up a last minute picnic. They made their own turkey and salami sandwiches with hot peppers for kick, had pineapple chunks and mini-candybars for dessert and washed it down with Blue Moon and Mike's Hard Lemonade (Cranberry).

30 Days has so much to do with community, on a large and personal scale. This dinner embodied the overall crucial element of trusting the people in my life, those who are either invested in the gesture of the piece, the artist, or both. Without them and their dedication, this piece couldn't exist. Much in the same way that without them my world would be poor and anorexic at best. Having a front row seat to see people stand together to be apart of something outside themselves, even at cost to their comfort, is humbling and incredibly encouraging.

Gloria and Nate went for the sports theme in their dinner. Nate dressed in his Cubs attire and Gloria doted her Sox gear, including a replica of their 2005 World Series trophy which sat on the table. They each drank from their team's plastic cup (obtained at actual games). On the window was taped a GO BLACKHAWKS!!! sign as the team had just moved onto the finals (or whatever they're called in hockey) before coming to dinner.

In spite of the visual clues that baseball would reign their dinner talk, they told me after that little statistical analysis or bad-mouthing actually occurred. Yet again the window created a safe place for their hearts to sit with another. On the outside children ran, wheeled, yelled, and sat to watch the work. From inside the window it may have seemed like typical children having typical times... but on the outside I spoke with a young man about how little food he eats in a given day because his family's lack of resources, and a teenage girl who has no dreams for her future. The glass wall failed to illuminate reality for those looking through either side, image contradicted content with vigor.

For the benefit of the young boy filled with hunger, I broke one of my rules for the first time this month. Opening the gallery door I asked Gloria and Nate to make him a sandwich. For a small amount of time I was visible from the outside, though not fully inside either. For the first time, the participants knew with certainty what was being talked about on the outside. For the first time dinner came outside before the hour was up, art and life collided. Based on his reaction, it may also have been the first time the boy, and his brother with whom he shared, had eaten that day.

Through my years of training as an artist I have struggled with a crisis of function. Theory has taught me the significance art has on the world and its people, and yet so often I see careers built on nothing more than glorified selfishness. I haven't come to a conclusion yet of how to balance the two roles (and my inclination toward selfishness) other than to know I was made to do this and to grapple with the tension. Seeing art spring out of people... the thinking, feeling, hurting, committed, stimulating, challenging people in this piece, both inside and outside the window, gives me hope for a future that continues to respond to this struggle with grace, love and authentic humility.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 22

In the window.... well, tonight was a different night. Heather and Emily were scheduled to spend their dinner time together, two artists who had never met before. Unfortunately, Emily had some serious transportation issues getting to the gallery. For the first 25-ish minutes, Heather was alone in the window. For about a half hour the gallery owner, Mary Ellen, stepped in to chat while finishing her cocktail for the evening. After 8pm Emily arrived and began their planned dinner time. So this dinner was a unique experience, even for the piece.


For dinner Heather brought a Mediterranean spread, flatbread and cucumber salad. She brought cookies for dessert, sparkling water, and homemade chai. Fortunately she had enough food to begin eating dinner alone. When Emily arrived, she contributed blood orange juice, fried dumplings and a mini pie to share.

Speaking with Heather afterward, we each had potent but varied images of the evening. She expressed a sense of sterility in the white space alone while I was overwhelmed with awkwardness on her behalf. As she didn't expect to spend part of the evening on her own, she didn't have a form of entertainment besides the food. She quickly took to using the dinner elements as building blocks for an edible city on a plate foundation. She was both forced to be aware of herself in the space without retreating to another world (books, music, tv), though she still managed to find another world to reside in for a while.

I began to consider the idea of failure during this first leg of the night. What does it look like for a piece of this style to fail, to break down on itself. What are those parameters which it can avoid to remain functional and how far outside can it go before unrecognizable transformation occurs. The concept of failure begs not only to understand the outermost limits of the piece, but also a clear understanding of its identity.

When Mary Ellen decided to pass the waiting time with Heather, I found it both a relief and incredibly stressful. Not acting as a simple intermission, this kind gesture divided the evening into three acts. While watching them talk together, Mary Ellen not eating food and Heather feeling too conscious to eat alone, the expectation of Emily's arrival became physically tangible. While I was glad the piece organically solved its own issues, the tension of watching the second act, the space holder if you will, was unexpectedly tense... only because it pointed to the need for a third act and its indefinite nature.

When Emily did arrive, she was thrown into an experience that everyone else had become very comfortable in. Almost like the new kid at school. She adapted with grace and began a dinner time which represented the imperfect scenarios of life which often manipulate our outcomes. They talked together for over an hour, exceeding what some others have had on a "normal" dinner. Going yet again to very intimate topics (they told me afterward) the conversation was undesirably interrupted by three young men who became boisterously interactive from the outside. Whether out of frustration or a little fear from this interaction, they opted to end their dinner time two and a half hours after it technically began.

This night was as good as it was tense. At the end, as so many have said after their dinner time, the two women were relaxed and grateful for the intimacy of a tiny room with a glass wall. I was grateful to see my own piece shift, almost violently, before my eyes. Perhaps its full identity is still in the works, but nights like this refine it into a more articulate and strong version of itself.

30 Days of Dinner Time, Day 21

In the window, Sean and Larissa, a dating couple for the past half a year or so. I had never met either of them until their dinner and poor Larissa had no idea she was going to be meeting me at all. Sean had planned their participation as a surprise, and I must say that her honest reaction was delightful. She did a wonderful job embracing the piece even at the last possibly minute before entering into it.


For dinner Sean brought a feast. It was the kind of meal that was easy to see love had been put into, and the time they spent dining gave the courses value as well as flavor, even for the viewer. There were many stages to their dinner, beginning with cheese/olives and crackers for conversations eating, then onto a home grown arugula salad, an entree of lamb with sides followed by chocolate truffles for dessert. They also had a very nice bottle of red wine and seltzer water to drink.

This dinner embodied all that I had imagined about the piece before it actually came to life. Other nights have dominated one element or theme with style, but this dinner looked very much like the image in my imagination when initially developing the concept.

The weather was perfect, finally absent of cold and cloudy. As a friday night, the children were running and playing and people from the neighborhood were stopping to watch and talk. A very nice filmmaker came to see the piece from Pilsen because he read about it in the Tribune earlier in the day... which made for riveting conceptual conversation on the chairs. Sean and Larissa were highly engaged with both the inside and the outside of the glass and stayed well into dark. Afterward we had a fantastic conversation about the piece and their viewpoints from inside. On my trip home I ran into a young woman who had seen the piece days before, we talked all the way home about it, about our lives. It was just a pleasant evening all around.

Basically, I am so glad that in this dinner I saw the romantic side of the piece. Those evenings where tension and difficulty have prevailed will probably be the most educational and interesting overall, but this dinner felt like a kind gift of soul food...something attractive and nourishing. I'm glad that 30 Days in its entirety will have a complex identity, including gentle days which meet outstanding expectations.