Welded steel, 36 x 36 x 36, 1998.
A daydream happens at a school desk more than anywhere else: a child kept still in an assigned place, attention drifting away from the lesson. The sculpture is that desk. A broad writing surface is carried on a thick pier, a tall block stands in front of it as the seat, and the whole piece is about thirty-six inches in each direction, a child’s scale. The writing surface is where the work is done. Instead of a flat top it has a recess sunk into it at one end, a smoothly curved hollow with the profile of a basin.
The hollow is the right size for a head to lie in. A student who rests an arm on this desk and then lowers the head goes down into the surface, as someone goes under water. Furniture made to hold a child upright and attentive has been dished like a pillow, and the dish is cut into the working surface where the lesson would be laid out. Falling asleep over a book has its piece of furniture here.
The rest of the desk is hard. It is built from heavy flat planes and square-cut piers in dark, rough steel, and the hollow is the one place the surface gives way. The seat in front of it is empty.
