AZ Solitude Cabin, 2017

Untitled (AZ Solitude Cabin), 2017, mixed media, ed. 1/2, plus an AP or so.

Last year I spotted this structure in a front yard in Washington, DC. It is a wedge-shaped cabin [?] made of wood and siding and decking and corrugated plastic. The translucent plastic panel on the angled side facing the house is hinged and often propped open, like a canopy. There is a small platform in front, but I could not see what, if anything, is inside, without going into the yard.

It reminded me, in the accumulation of fleeting instants I’d see it, of Andrea Zittel’s Wagon Stations.

Andrea Zittel, Wagon Station, First Generation, 2004, customized by Giovanni Jance

And her Homestead Units.

Andrea Zittel, Homestead Unit at A-Z West

And her Cellular Compartment Units.

Andrea Zittel, Cellular Compartment Units, 2001, all images via zittel.org

Those Cellular Compartment Units especially stood out for me, as I wondered what this structure could be for, what could be inside. Zittel created a separate space for each, “single human need or desire from sleeping to eating to reading to watching TV.”

I resisted the impulse to declare someone else’s garden folly a work, and nothing I googled ever brought me any closer to finding one of my own, or figuring out what it is.

Seating for one? It turns out to be uncommon to see wide shots of the cabinet for Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon. It did not make the trip to the Met Breuer. Are there shots of it empty? image: hyperallergic

I happened to drive by the house again recently, and the structure is still there. So I’ve been thinking of it again.

I had three chairs in my house, but only one in my sitting shed in my front yard, Thoreau did not write.

I’ve passed this writer shack in Salt Lake, hard up against what’s basically a highway, for years. This is like the third or fourth renovation.

I just need a quiet place to write, but I live on a very busy street with constant traffic.

Gehry’s Norton House writer’s nest, on the boardwalk at Venice Beach, but from the back. It’s open to the house. image: thegrumpyoldlimey

Anyway, I’ve decided to go ahead, and let this stay as is, as ed. 1. And I am ready to make another. A structure customized for a single human need or purpose.  It could be writing, or reading, or sitting, or showering, or pissing. Actually, there’s already a structure for that.