The Art of the Brick

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the leaP

Yellow

I had a lot of things on my mind the day I planned

to leave the law firm in 2004, not least of which

was my resignation speech. But whatever room was

left over was taken up by the idea for Yellow. More

than anything else, Yellow was the idea that made

it impossible for me to continue living as I was, and

forced me to make the leap to pursue my art full time.

I sketched Yellow out on memo pads, Winston &

Strawn stationery, drink coasters, restaurant receipts,

and tablecloths hundreds of times before I actually

built it.

Yellow is also one of those pieces whose meaning

has changed for me over time. When I dreamed it

up, it was part of a trilogy representing birth, life, and

death. Yellow was death, a man tearing himself apart

and seeing his vital essence spilling out on the ground

before him. Originally, I wanted organs coming out

too—really graphic stuff.

“Look on every exit as being an entrance

somewhere else. —Tom Stoppard”

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But in the two years it took to translate the idea

into a finished work, the guts stopped being guts

and became just bricks. And once it appeared in

shows, Yellow began to be seen as a standalone

piece, represented on posters and book covers and

websites without its companions, Blue (birth) and

Red (life), to provide context.

I think now, with the benefit of

a decade’s hindsight, that

Yellow is not about death

at all, but about opening

yourself up to the world

without fear or reserve. It’s about

dropping the mask and the hundreds of little

compromises you make every day to show the world

the true you, and letting life come at you as it may.

The frustrations and anxieties I felt when I lived a

lawyer’s life were never the result of privation or lack

of opportunity. Quite the opposite: I was presented

with choices, and I made the “right” one every time.

Somehow, after making all those “right” choices, I

ended up in the wrong place. So I decided to make

a wrong choice instead. And I have Yellow to thank

for that.

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