Food, clothing and shelter are the accepted needs for survival. I believe that there is also an instinctual drive (or need) for visual comfort.

We accumulate possessions to "construct" a persona that we share with others while private ideas about ourselves are relegated to secret spaces. This work is about the decoration of our private spaces. Private decoration is an honest expression of who we are, and it illustrates the basic need to establish visual comfort within our lives. The comfort gained in private decoration is largely unavailable for our public (or constructed) personality. We build nests just large enough for ourselves, and they allow us to deconstruct--returning to the ideas that we do not share or display when we are with other people.

Due to the nature of privacy (and our ability to guard it), these spaces are difficult to find. Most are puposefully obscured by the visual clutter that is associated with our constructed personalities. This allows us to safely build secret spaces within our shared environments.

A homeless person does not accumulate to construct the facade of a different personality. Adolescents in search of privacy have no desire to create a space that is socially presentable. Still, both groups answer a need to create visual comfort within their spaces. I relocate their honesty to the gallery.