My Hyper Specific Influences

The artists, rooms, and words that shaped my taste

May 15, 2025

∙ Paid

The corner pieces in my great Puzzle of Taste (a non-exhaustive list):

The Giocometti Gallery at The Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark

Walking into this room, I felt my design sensibilities snap into place. I wanted to burn my closet and tear down the Lana Del Rey posters in my dorm room. I had a new North Star.

Outdoor Basketball Courts

Basketball nets I've collected in my memory: Brooklyn Bridge Park, New Mexico, Guatamala, Somewhere in Pennsylvania

Is it the spirit of play persevering? The urban iconography of a basketball net? Oh, man. This will do it for me every time.

Barbara Hepworth’s St. Ives Studio

A messy space where you can tell someone is actually making will always, always, always be cooler than a perfectly staged space. This can look like mountains of hard drives, using a flat file cabinet as a coffee table, sagging shelves of heavy pottery.

Some other work spaces I adore:

TADAO ANDO STUDIO OSAKA, Robert Mapplethorpe, Credit unknown

Sherri Smith

Photo credit: Ann Arbor District Library Archives

Sherri was one of my professors in art school. The idea of “separating the art from the artist” and “using your platform” had just entered the mainstream lexicon, and well-meaning (if sophomoric) peers would rip you to shreds during critique if the piece you made for your Ceramics final didn’t offer a commentary on The State of The World. I was not immune to this way of thinking. Meanwhile, Sherri (the archetypical kooky professor with work in the MoMA) hovered over her loom and meditated on craft. She made art for art’s sake, and ripped my head out of the sand in the process. Sometimes the Big Meaning behind a work is that someone took the time to make it.

Looking at her work now, all I can think is, "holy shit she is so good"

Photos I took of Sherri and her home during my Senior year

Ryoji Ikeda

Ikeda is an electric composer and visual artist from Japan. I first experienced his work when he lectured at Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. I was 20, in the mood for noise and contrast, and Ikeda provided. I left electrified. I had previously thought of data/algorithm-based art as not for me; too Bitcoin-y, too bro-y. Harping on binary computer code for his installation work, it feels like entering the soul of our machines, instead of being pummeled by their technicolor output. It helped that everything was so damn cinematic.