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Keira Alexandra's Brooklyn apartment has several colored phones wired to ring simultanously. (Photo by Jimmy Cohrssen) |
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| What drives someone to place not one but six plastic rotary phones,
each a different color, on her coffee table and wire them to ring
simultaneously? What makes a person track down a company that
manufactures "red brick" cardboard mantelpieces for liquor store
Christmas displays and then... by Alexandra Ringe What drives someone to place not one but six plastic rotary phones, each a different color, on her coffee table and wire them to ring simultanously? What makes a person track down a company that manufactures "red brick" cardboard mantel pieces for liquor store Christmas displays and then... And what would inspire her to assemble 47 limbless, two-inch-tall Fisher Price people on a ledge above her bathroom door? The phones, mantel, and Fisher Price brigade represent only a tiny percentage of the objects that Keira Alexandra, a 30-year-old graphic designer, has gathered in her Brooklyn apartment. Alexandra works for Number Seventeen, a small Manhattan firm with clients such as MTV, DDB Needham, and David Byrne, and she traces her aesthetic to the living room of her childhood home in McLean, Virginia. "Every piece of furniture was made between 1958 and 1963," she explains. "Everything was completely Modernist clean, all white or off-white--nothing of color. And it was all silk or some bumpy material, so I think I had to have a little fit of getting into color and plastic." This is more significant, though, than a reaction to parental decor. Alexandra is part of the generation of graphic designers who have internalized our synthetic world. When pressed on why she finds plastics so desirable, Alexandra replies, "it's the bright colors, the washability. . ." and trails off, waiting for the next question. But artist Mike Wodkowski, who shares the 1,000-square-foot loft, won't let her off that easily: "Come on, what you really like is the artificial nature of it all." Alexandra agrees, "It's the--what's that Baudrillard word?" Wodkowski answers, "Simulacra"--just the term she was looking for. What she likes about plastic, she explains, is that it is often used to simulate the natural--precisely what designers of her parents' generation detested about plastics even as they reveled in the new forms such materials made possible. Alexandra embraces plastic's fakeness, and generally prefers the simulated to the real: "I remember walking down the street one night when I first moved to New York, and I said, 'God, that moon tonight is out of a movie.' I'm probably more into the fake of the movie more than just admitting that it's nature doing its wonder." She points out simulacra around the apartment. She likes her plastic planter shaped like a reclining doe because it is "trying to be in nature." A spray can labeled "Christmas Snow" delights her--it bottles a re-creation of weather. She especially loves another can marked "Real Plastic Snow" because it seems to affirm the existence of fake plastic snow. The bow printed on the lid of a Russell Stover candy box, she notes, supplants the need for an actual length of satin ribbon, and her plastic sushi looks almost edible but not quite. But simulacra covers only some of Alexandra's collections. In addition to an array of plastic food, she has also acquired shelves and shelves of real groceries that she has no intention of consuming. Her arrangements of these objects serve as a do-it-yourself anthropology exhibit. A pink can of Luncheon Meat Pork from the Czech Republic sits on top of a white can of domestic No Frills Beef Stew, suggesting a cross-cultural link in preserved meat and a nation-specific approach to font and color. On the shelf above, bottles of dishwashing liquid whose names are their colors ("Blue" and "Green") stand next to bottles of lime, orange, and cherry soda, making you wonder why we wash with the same bright colors we drink. Yet Alexandra insists that she isn't trying to make any statements about what we buy, that she has simply gathered products whose packaging appeals to her, and not just visually: "I have the Japanese mayonnaise bottle because it's the weirdest-feeling thing to touch." It is when she explains the overall lure of her kitchen items--the oval tin of Fried Carp, the box of Party Frills toothpicks--that Alexandra sounds most like a graphic designer: "It is their disposability. I know that time and labor and money are spent changing the Coke can, but it's those products that people have spent less time on and that are sort of ephemeral that I find totally enjoyable--more so than a finely crafted, labored-over painting." The unifying forces behind her collections, she says, are "shape and color, if I had to be really basic about it." Indeed, no one appreciates shape and color quite like Alexandra. From a pantry shelf she pulls out a plastic bottle whose white label is covered with more or less uniform black text in Japanese. "Check these out. The bottle is nothing, but these things..." Her voice is reverent, as if she is about to introduce the most precious object imaginable. She removes the bottle's cap and pours what look like hot pink ball bearings into her hand. About 30 shiny balls cover her palm, and mixed among them is an occasional frosted chartreuse disk that resembles the top of a pushpin. She admires the balls and disks for several seconds and then remarks, "I should baggie some of these things," referring to the highest form of tribute she can bestow upon a (small) item: placing it into a two-inch by two-inch Ziploc and adding it to the 106 such bags already hanging above her bathroom mirror. Alexandra guides the candy back into the bottle, replaces the cap, and shakes it, making a gentle, maraca-like noise. "This is stuff Keira does on a regular basis," Wodkowski observes. "She interacts physically with the objects. It's a total immersion." Alexandra doesn't hear him. She's back at the shelf. "Oh, and this"--she's holding a second, similar bottle--"this is pretty, too. These are silver balls. . ." Luckily for Alexandra, the cleaning involved in keeping hundreds of things on display gives her plenty of time "to spend with my objects." She wants her possessions to be handled as often as possible, by her, by Wodkowski, by their friends, making her the opposite of most collectors. Everything she likes is within easy reach. Two dozen superballs in a bowl are meant to be bounced; a toy van that comes with a stylus between its axles is meant to run around an LP and play music; and the phones, of course, are meant to be answered. Alexandra enjoys watching people enjoy her things, so much so that she has often thought in a "someday" way about opening a museum. "I know people would appreciate the fact that it's stuff that isn't taken seriously, that they wouldn't have to worry about a message or a meaning." She refuses, however, to consider herself an artist, nor does she classify her collections as art--the closest she gets to the a-word is to grant that her arrangements are artistic. What would she call the apartment, then? "Knickknacking, just knickknacking," she says. Wodkowski laughs, adding that "nobody else sees it that way--nobody else knickknacks to this degree." But Alexandra won't budge: "I can't consider the apartment 'art,' because it's all about being childlike--it's all for the pure enjoyment of the thing." Of course, some would argue that the best art is born precisely of "pure enjoyment," but once you've experienced Alexandra's apartment, the distinction doesn't really matter. As guiding principles go, you could do a lot worse than color, shape, and plastic. ALEXANDRA RINGE, who lives in Brooklyn and writes for such magazines as Civilization and New York, met Keira Alexandra on jury duty. |
Keywords:
collecting, knickknack