Waiting Room was made as the set for Act I of a three-act play that was never finished. It was shown in 2016 at Lawndale Art Center in Houston in Double Digits: Lawndale’s Artist Studio Program, 10 Years and Counting, a group exhibition celebrating the thirty artists who took part in Lawndale’s Artist Studio Program in its first ten years.

The installation is a reception desk with no receptionist. It has a sign-in book and pen, a bowl of candy, a small succulent, a service bell, and a fishbowl holding a live betta fish named Ennui. Visitors were welcome to sign in, but nobody told them what they were signing in for, and no name was ever called. A charcoal and graphite drawing of numbers hangs above the desk where a clock would be. Every number shows at once, so time looks stopped, or broken, or no longer counting toward anything. (Ennui was not harmed in the making of this work, and lived another five years after the exhibition.)

The work is limbo. Limbo is a waiting room for eternity, where you’re processed but never seen. The installation brings that state down to the scale of an ordinary lobby, the kind of place where everyone has waited without knowing how long it would take or whether anyone was coming.

Act I: Waiting Room (detail), 2016
Charcoal and graphite drawing, betta fish, candy bowl, succulent, sign-in book, bell and pen.
Dimensions variable