Varhaus No. 2
October 16, 2027
October 19, 2027
Noon
It’s been a few months since you visited. You’re in the neighborhood with an old friend.
“I have to show you something.”
There are two fine cars and a beater truck parked in the parallel parking spots in front. There’s now a back lit professional sign: Varhaus. Etched on both sidelights of the door installation: Figure it out. Figure it out. Figure it out. On the Glass Door, hours of operation, a phone number for appointments and a huge number 12.
The door opens effortlessly and slowly comes to rest behind you. Your view is blocked by a large wall painted white, perfectly painted eggshell white. It is covered with a message written in a sloppy golden graffiti. “Be not conformed to the patterns of this world, but be renewed by the transformation of your mind”...you take a moment to decipher the scrawl and continue past the wall to the open room. More questions than answers.
You were excited to show your friend the painting you discovered on your last visit. It is nowhere to be found. Instead there are 10 huge paintings on the wall. You scan them all to find the one you’re looking for. No luck. You find a welcome desk just past the entrance with a dozen bottles of wine, crystal set up like a cocktail party and a professional coffee pot circled by the very same mug you have in your cabinet at home.
As you help yourself to a couple of wines that you’d never heard of, a woman’s voice greets you from an unseen location.
“Thanks a million for coming. Look around. I’d love to hear what you think.”
The middle of the room is quite dark except the odd spotlight located above various furniture arrangements. The arrangements are eclectic but seem curated. One, looks like your grandmothers home. One looks like a mid-century modern couch and chair sitting area. One is a modern office desk set up with three monitors and full-blown video production rig with soft-boxes. New rugs cover the concrete floor beneath each setting creating a sense of completion to each lounging package. These are comforting spots to talk and hang, but upon further inspection you realize that their positioning, every seating place, has a perpendicular view of an artwork.
The paintings and the walls glow in white light as if one little shadow could ruin the whole show. A slight music plays in the background, gregorian chant or some form of calming music.
You’ve stopped looking for the painting you came to see and carry on toward the back wall to see if the artist is in. The glass is pitch black. The woman, standing near a partition is talking on the phone while sitting at a small desk. She smiles at you with her eyes, but continues to speak into the phone: “You’re right, the photos just don’t do it justice.”
Your friend plops down in a replica Eames at the MCM area. She crosses her ankles and puts her wine down. It’s the first time she’s sat down in three days. She expects you to sit too, but you begin to meander. Some of the paintings are better than the one you saw previously. Some are not quite to your taste. But they are massive, energetic and colorful. They are so large and so abstract that you feel as though you may walk into them, proceed within and exit through back to a new world. Like the back door in the wardrobe to Narnia.
You seek the information relevant to the paintings. Low, to the right of each is a small placard where you would expect the details of the work: size, year, medium, price, etc. But no. You’ve learned in two trips to Varhaus that nothing is obvious. The card simply says: figure it out.
Somehow, your gaze and investigations have been limited to the back and left of the building. With the exception of looking for the darkened painting studio near the back wall and to the right, you missed 2/3 of the right hand side. You observe your friend, relaxing and drinking her wine, you notice a great curtain behind her. It’s purple and it looks lush and regal. It hangs from the ceiling to the floor.
As you’re pondering this, you remember: “Where is the artist?” This thought comes to you as the woman from the phone enters your space with an uncorked bottle of wine. Before greeting her, the question leaps from your lips as she tops you off.
Where is Jason?
“He’s in New Orleans with his wife. It’s been his busy season. A pop up in the Southampton. Festivals in Tampa, Naples and Miami. They are celebrating her birthday in their favorite place. He says that NOLA refills him to paint.”
“I was here six months ago and he gave me a coffee mug. The place is so different, it’s evolved. There was only one painting. It had a different energy. It’s calmer now and not so dramatic.”
“Do you want to see his new studio?”
She pushed a button on her phone and the purple drapes retracted revealing two full glass garage doors. When the moving curtains came to a stop, the lights came on behind the glass. A white hot light. On each pane of glass was a different saying. Some were from the coffee mug. Some Bible verses. Some inspirational quotes. The largest etched graphic, pasted over two of the larges panels in the glass door: “Remember, Remember the Twelfth of December.”
You don’t bother to ask what it means.
You walk over to peer in. As you approach, the garage doors rise silently. With the exception of the huge easels, it was spotless. The table in the middle of the u-shaped workspace was like quartz. Anything could be made in that studio. It could have been a chocolatier’s kitchen. An electronic technician’s lab. A lunch room.
“He hasn’t moved in yet. When he gets home, he’ll set up for paint. The studio you saw on your last visit will become the workshop.”
“workshop?”
“The workshop builds frames and sizes substrates for the paintings. But, more importantly, it’s the engine for making the ideas. Between the workshop and the new studio is Jason’s personal office and space.”
Your friend joins the two of you. She’s now invested in the speaker. She inquires into the woman’s position.
“I walked in here one day, just like the two of you. It was sparser. He was painting and basically ignored me when I asked him about the painting that was in progress on the easel. He asked me to have a beverage and sit down for a few minutes, he’d talk when he was finished. An hour later he sat down with a coffee. I asked him what he was doing with this space. He sidestepped my question and asked me fifty. His questions were probing about my belief system, my interests and why I was drawn to interrupt a working man. Not rude, intense.”
The conversation concluded when he handed me a coffee mug.
“I’m looking for people like you. You can come by any time. We can do anything here.”
Your friend interjects: “but what do you do, here?”
The woman smiles. “Sometimes I sell paintings. I sell the historical furniture arrangements that I love and collect. I talk to people like you two. I follow the rules on the mug, not because they are rules, but because they fit me.”
“I suppose my accidental job is to soften the intensity of the artist. I’m Ruth.”
“Nice to meet you, Ruth.”
“He’s an asshole, then?”
Ruth tops off your wines with a smile.
“Only if you misunderstand him. Let me put it to you like this: even chocolate cake tastes bad when it’s shoved down your throat. I cut nice slices.”
You share a smile. Women know.
You hear a door open from the back of the space. Men talking, voices coming nearer. Two men walk by, one in pinstripes, the other in casual wear. They pause their gait long enough to nod pleasantly and say hello. They continue in tandem out the front door and into the Range Rover and Chevy Suburban parked in front of Varhaus. They speed away leaving the beater truck parked alone.
Ruth excuses herself. She heads back to where you first found her and begins to dial the phone. Full glass of wine, you proceed granny’s kitchen arrangement near a baby blue painting. More questions than answers.
Your friend goes silent for a few minutes. She looks into the painting intently.
“I see so many things in this painting. I don’t know if they are on purpose or by accident. What does it mean?”
You remember: “The why is more valuable than the what. The reasons are on the mug.”
To yourself: “What does it cost to do this?”
Next in the series….
Varhaus: Built in Imagination First
I’ve been building Varhaus in my mind for years, long before I had names for any of this. Before Million Dollar Garage, before newsletters, before pricing ladders, before trying to explain myself.
Million Dollar Garage was the first iteration. Necessary. Small. Personal. A place to learn what could be made with limited means, stubbornness, and whatever was in reach.
Varhaus is the larger endeavor.
A place for doing cool shit. Art. Food. Experience. Motion. Surprise. Attraction. A destination people hear about from someone who says, you have to see this place. A room that keeps changing. A business that earns its keep. A place where discovery is part of the product.
Maybe it can be built. Maybe it cannot be built on an artist’s paycheck. That part is still unresolved.
So I’ve decided to build it first in public imagination.
The work becomes energy. The output becomes memory.
What follows is a serialized vision of a place I hope to make real through work, time, luck, and grace.
Begin with Varhaus No. 1.
First, how did you get my truck?
Second, he is an asshole.
Third, its starting to really take shape.