Legacy in A Minor
I’ve wanted to be a musician for as long as I can remember.
There is something so elegant and transformative about art through song. And the practice and study… all in the name of playing.
I spent my teens and twenties among musicians of various stripes. Sweaty house shows in the nineties and aughts. Punk, noise, metal, electronic, folk, country… a few of them even made it through all of that to some recognition.
As for me, I can bang out several chords and roughly keep a rhythm. Never quite got the hang of singing while playing.
Never got the hang of singing at all.
In 2024, I was contacted by a woman who had seen some of my upcycled furniture in an art show.
She had an heirloom Kohler & Campbell piano, a gift to her great-grandmother from her great-grandfather on their first anniversary in 1916. She was a trained pianist and had passed on a music scholarship to get married.
Each generation afterward in that family had learned to play on this piano. It spent the next century moving from VA to New Jersey, California, PA, Seattle, & DC.
I was commissioned to turn the keyboard into a console table, giving the family’s musical legacy a new shape.
I was finally able to play an instrument.
Even if the music wasn’t the kind you can hear.
This project was originally featured in the second issue of the Liminal.
More projects like this can be viewed in the Upcycling Gallery at foxandthistle.studio.