curator: Mark Housley

I was never a bed wetter but I had a boyfriend who was. He said that it felt so good to pee in his dreams that he didn’t want to get up to use the toilet. Sometimes I would wake up next to him on this warm wet mattress. I still sleep on the same bed. And these stains remind me of him. Thomas died in 1995 and I sleep with his blanket; it is a midnight blue fake-velvet and coming apart at the seams. It looks like giant moths have attacked it. My bed is full of secrets and stories, hidden histories of sexual encounters, long gone boyfriends, restless and lonely nights of masturbation. When I remove the sheets and look at the mattress I find odd stains among the floral patterned decorations. I have always loved the fabric of mattresses, the grays and pinks and creamy browns; the allover pattern upon pattern. When I turn my mattress over I can see that there are actually several fabric patterns. I saw a story on the news about how beds are picked up from alleys and dumpsters. Abandoned beds, filthy, urine soaked, are picked up off the street and sold to bed refurbishers and resold as new. My bed has been resurfaced three times. The Bed is a metaphor for life, for people’s dreams and experiences and for one’s desires. Beds have histories. They tell stories. The work in this show explores some of these histories. The artists are Kristin Calabrese, Martha Sue Harris, Thet Shein Win and myself. -Mark Housley

Untitled by Kristin Calabrese