Spruse Warehouse Report
October 12, 2007
I was working in Stephen Sprouse's warehouse yesterday. It’s a commercial space in Williamsburg where Stephen had me consolidate his archives shortly before he passed away. Many items had previously been stored in a Pennsylvania barn full of hay and mice, with wild temperature swings. It was a twenty-foot-tall pile of cardboard boxes, canvases, sketches, clothes, magazines, and books. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the 12-yard commercial dumpster on 14th Street into which Stephen’s former landlord had thrown the contents of Stephen’s entire apartment—much of it highly personal. He’d been evicted for several reasons, one of which was for painting his entire loft, floor to ceiling, with silver alumichrome paint. (And when I say “he,” I mean “me.”)
Stephen was away at the time of the eviction, and I remember him calling me frantically when he learned of what happened, asking me to rescue it all and bring it to my apartment for safekeeping. It was absurd to think I’d have the capacity to move and store it all, especially on such short notice. But Stephen often asked for the impossible. And, as usual, I did the best I could. But by the time I made it to the dumpster, it had been picked over by who knows who, and there was little left to salvage.
Thankfully, plenty of things survived that purge by being stored off-premises. (Though, as I said, they’d suffered their ordeals.) When Stephen’s archives were finally in one place, he had hoped to guide me through cataloguing everything in anticipation of his two dying wishes: a gallery show and a book. Methodically sorting through decades of ephemera, separating the wheat from the chaff, was a herculean task for anyone, and sadly, Stephen died before much progress had been made.
The warehouse had been charging Stephen’s family for storage based on the square footage of floor space, so after Stephen died, I helped his brother Brad and nephew, Brandon, to consolidate everything into the 20-foot-tall pile I mentioned earlier. We covered the pile with a few milky plastic drop clothes, and there it sat for a couple of years.
Until now. One of Stephen’s wishes is finally underway. And thankfully, it’s not just me..
The clothes and sketches have already been moved to a clean, legitimate art-storage warehouse and are being methodically cataloged by a team of people with much more skill and focus than I have, and yesterday we were on to the paintings. Large ones. Ten feet tall, in some cases. Their lengthwise stretchers had previously been cut in two so that they could be folded in half for storage. Not ideal, but like I said, they're big.
My job was to pull them out of where they'd been resting, unfold the ones that needed unfolding, and lay them on the floor so that they could be photographed. Not photographed in a professional studio sense, but just to figure out what existed and to assess conditions.
All things considered, things didn’t seem too bad. But the deeper I dug, the sketchier things turned. The warehouse is damp in some places, dusty in others, and soon my hands were black and my throat tickled. After one painting was documented, I'd wipe my hands, cough a bit, and pull out the next. Gloves and a mask would have been a good idea. Next time.
"Make it fast with this one," I said about a piece that sported a beard of white mold along its back. "I don't want to spend much time near it."
Along with the paintings were some life-sized photographic cutouts of Sprouse models from 1989, mounted on heavyweight foam board with stands, like celebrity cutouts you might see in a mall. I remember when they were new, done for a special event, and then used as a display in the Stephen Sprouse retail store that was in SoHo. Along with the models, there was a cutout of Stephen Sprouse, too, at about 35 years old, looking young, strong, and healthy. Made using a press photo taken by his friend Francesco Scavullo.
I flinched when I first saw it. It was so life-like. "It's the man himself," I said, as I propped it up against the others and angled it so that it could be photographed with the least amount of glare. "You're looking good," I said. I wanted to hug him.
I couldn't stand next to the life-size image and not be flooded with memories and mixed emotions. I looked at his hands, his face, his eyes. I could hear his deep, distinctive voice, excited with ideas. And after the figure was documented, I had a hard time putting it back into the musty corner. I wanted to clean it up, repair its damaged toes, wipe off the thin layer of dust, and let him breathe.
"Soon enough," I said, and carefully laid him on the top of the pile.
