At home in Bolinas, California with Emily Prince
"It’s not my favorite work of art based on an aesthetic hierarchy: its value comes from its history in my life."
Good morning.
This month’s REALM features artist Emily Prince, who’s spare, vividly-colored, one-room studio-home is perched near the scraggly, sun-scorched California coastline in Bolinas. Emily is a rare map librarian, mother, and artist working with humble ‘minor-scale’ materials: beads and thread, as of late, making what I would call pop-ish, nomadic (i.e., wearable) artworks that interweave the conceptual with traditional craft. I’ve long admired Emily’s domestic interiors wherein she allows existing architecture to determine the density of her rooms and the spacing of objects within them.
Emily’s home has an implicit humor: a section of erotica books is held up by an awkwardly rendered Mickey Mouse painted on a chalky, repurposed matryoshka doll; a keyboard perched within a built-in bookshelf is nods at, in miniature, a grand piano in a library; the sole walk-in closet doubles as an indoor-treehouse bedroom for Emily’s young son. There is virtually no seating (save the chairs at Emily and her son’s desks)—the dining room table and benches are permanently parked outside for year round al-fresco. Emily’s home is brightly offbeat, almost childlike in it’s messy joys, imbued with color. It maintains sparseness without being pretentious, an uncommon combination. Both in her home and her conversation, Emily maintains tact, precision, and a penchant for the comic. Her home realm is equally pared down, loose and untamed—in her words: ‘feral’.
Airyka Rockefeller: I remember when you were approved to move into your studio you were elated. How did you first know this was the right home for you when you initially encountered it?
Emily Prince: At first glance it was the total manifestation of my dream-house: a one-room cabin (a fantasy since childhood) clearly influenced by the architecture of traditional Japanese homes, with lots of windows—flooded with natural light—plus an outside “room” (a deck) of equal size to the inside, surrounded by a year round blooming garden (like we live in a gazebo) and an ocean view which continues to stun me. I grew up in the mountains and seeing the Pacific was a yearly pilgrimage.
Is there another place, besides this one, that you consider home?
Yes! I’m from the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. The Yuba River is where I feel most profoundly at home. There’s a spot I’ve been going since I was a kid and return to as much as possible. I’m currently grieving a trip that was cancelled due to a nearby fire. It was a good lesson; I didn’t realize this year’s last trip was the last and didn’t appreciate it as such. I rushed my time at the river under the expectation I’d be back soon, and I regret that, painfully. Next time, every time, I must cherish it like it could be the last.
So many fires this past year in California—it really upended the sense of being able to rely on the stability of any place—of it’s very there-ness. Who do you share your home with?
My partner Mac and my eight-year-old son Leon. Mac built Leon a lofted bed in the walk-in closet, which is now Leon’s room. Mac’s ascetic tendencies inspired me to whittle down my own material attachments. Shedding feels better than acquiring. I’ve discovered that often my preferred option for filling space is just with space. The minimalism feels expansive: a direct offering of openness to my psyche. Oh, and, we have an eight-month-old ginger tabby: Sunny, who goes by Slibbery Nibbles.
What about living with others do you enjoy most?
I yearn for the feeling of family. On the nights when Leon is with his dad in SF and my partner’s away, I don’t sleep well. My nervous system registers the absence and can’t fully rest. Mostly that uneasiness comes from my maternal instinct being thrown by the separation from my young child for days. I never get used to it; it always feels unnatural. On the other hand, when we’re all here, I enjoy getting into parallel grooves where we do our own thing in a shared space during the day, and reunite to connect over meals. That makes a happy togetherness.
How does the town you live in affect you?
I can’t responsibly address this question without mentioning that we live on the land of the Me-Wuk (Coast Miwok), whose living people go by Graton Rancheria. Like any Americans, we live on stolen land. I recommend this Native Land map to investigate the indigenous habitation of place, an awareness of which is the absolute minimum for our responsibilities as current inhabitants.
I feel lucky and privileged to be where I most want to live. For now that’s Bolinas, and West Marin more broadly. We have to move soon and found a dreamy spot in Inverness. I love it there too, maybe even more, as evidenced by how I spend my time; I swim in Tomales Bay daily since I’m too chicken to go into the Pacific. We will miss Bolinas but are grateful it’s near enough to visit weekly for Leon’s guitar lesson, the “corner store” —a 24-hour bountiful, honor-system farm stand—and to walk along the mesa with friends. Woodsy Inverness feels like a deep return to home since I grew up in the forest. It’s meaningful to me that my son will get to experience that.
You keep things very pared down, belonging-wise. Within your avoidance of clutter, is there anything you collect regularly?
I collect wildflowers and weeds for bouquets daily. I treasure all that the practice entails: noticing the landscape, spontaneously detouring, valuing the non-precious and wild, bringing the outside in, making space, arranging, remembering to breathe. Because Sunny likes knocking everything over, it leads to opportunities to practice gluing vases back together. I’ve been attempting my amateur version of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden joinery to mend broken pottery. I brush the cracks with gold dust my ceramicist neighbor gifted me, dot with super glue and hold together until they stabilize. I’m really bad at it so far.
Tell me about your most beloved piece of art at home and how it came into your life.
It’s a banjo my friends made long ago when we lived in San Francisco. It’s not my favorite work of art based on an aesthetic hierarchy, even though it is visually pleasing in its simplicity; it’s value comes from its history in my life. It reminds me of an era before most artists moved away. It was one of the first things I grabbed for the “go-bag” when we evacuated because of wildfires this year. Having to select our most valued objects in a hurry was a perfect way to essentialize. I understood how much of what we had didn’t matter to me. When we returned home I went on a cleansing rampage: the presence of extraneous things unnerves me. I suppose that explains my attraction to small houses—I don’t even like extra rooms. Superfluousness, clutter, overwhelms me.
While your collection of objects and furniture is spare, your palette is anything but: it’s so vibrant, not at all the popular, monochrome, neutral palette of contemporary minimalism. How are you affected by color?
I love color, particularly color-combining, paring pastels with neon and earth tones. I’m drawn to weird crossovers, not just with home decorating but in all facets of life. Mac says my enjoyment of color reminds him of Mexico, so I like to imagine that I’ve inherited that from the Latinx half of my family.
What drives you crazy at home? Tell me about any home-related pet peeves you have.
Oh, I never feel annoyed by anything.
Just kidding! Being in nature, it’s “buggy” inside. I end up irking myself because I quit cleaning up after spiders—since it’s relentless—we have lots of webs anywhere you look up, which makes me feel slobbish.
Has your perspective on home changed during the pandemic?
I’ve surprised myself that despite my lifelong fantasy for living in a one-room cabin, I actually do need some personal space, just a bit.
What feelings or sensibilities do you strive to have at home?
The comfort of stability. This fire season, I’ve realized how my need for a stable home is directly related to certain childhood traumas. The threat of losing home triggers deep wounds around not feeling I belonged. At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on the environmental responsibilities we have, in terms of where we live. It seems living in a forest may be irresponsible. In our deepest roots of being human, the nomadic is perhaps our natural way to exist. I’m aspiring to cultivate less attachment to a single site, and flexibility with movement. Our upcoming move will be my fifth in five years. That necessity has forced me to practice getting comfortable with impermanence.
Home is a particular space in that it offers privacy, something other places only offer fleetingly. How do you utilize your privacy at home?
Honestly, I’m extremely introverted. So I need, and relish, privacy. It’s an element I’m looking forward to about Inverness, which is for introverts. As much as I’ve appreciated living in this village on the mesa, and will miss our neighbors, the forested seclusion of our new place better suits my reclusive nature.
I know you’re moving soon and I’m curious what you consider the most meaningful thing about your home that you won’t be able to take with you when you leave here?
Proximity to the ocean. That vastness of view is irreplaceably restorative. Feeling my own smallness in comparison to the seemingly infinite always brings me comfort.
Describe your home in 5 words.
Open, light, colorful, uncluttered, feral.
Describe your dream home in 5 words.
Open, light, colorful, uncluttered, feral.
Peruse some of Emily’s past and present art and wearable work here.
Delving Deeper: Kintsugi & Aleatory Art
Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of ceramic repair (which Emily is quite bad at yet quite enjoys) is rooted in Zen Buddhist philosophies that consider an object’s history and unfolding functionality more meaningful then a static version of original intact-ness. A contemporary practitioner offers this bittersweet explanation of Kintsugi and a recent At A Distance podcast I enjoyed discusses Kintsugi with the potter Edmund de Waal, for anyone inclined to delve deeper.
The related Japanese concept of Mottainai (regret over the full value of something not being put to use) commingles ecological principles and aesthetic possibilities, and it is this mesh that I’m drawn to. Might objects of all sorts, especially those we live with daily (clothing, domestic furniture, tools, textiles, cookware) be designed with regenerative value in mind? Could regenerative values (of fixing, mending, repair, reuse and extended life) eventually lead to an updated popular aesthetic? I truly hope so. What items, pieces of furniture, clothing or tools have an ongoing value of usefulness (even if the use is ongoing aesthetic appreciation) rather than an expiring usefulness? What if we only had things in our home that we loved enough to repair or rebuild when they faltered?
Regenerative usefulness is something that will surely come up again within REALM, but for now, let me turn your attention toward the aleatory art of Kintsugi, which also requires the skills, and the possibilities, of our hands. Just saying the word aleatory is a pleasure—the concept is a sensuous mess as well. I first heard of aleatory art when I tried my limber hand at Suminagashi in a very wet class I asked a friend to teach a few girlfriends in my dining room (my table has still not forgiven me). Suminagashi, like Kintsugi, is another Japanese art form. It’s pleasures exist largely in unfolding, in surprise. Both are aleatory arts, meaning they are created via techniques that are inherently based in chance. Within Kintsugi, a vessel broken into improbable pieces gives way to a second set of shapes, and lines of gold echo both prior damage and subsequent reparation. Within Suminagashi, loops of ink spread across the surface of water, determining shapes by circumstantial air flow and vibrations on the water vessel itself. The practitioner chooses one moment, out of nearly infinite possible moments, when to imprint the ever-unfurling ink onto a sheet of paper. Time-sensitive, chance-sensitive, and unrepeatable, both Suminagashi and Kintsugi bring attention to the alchemical, instead of the fixed.
Consider Home
…a realm of play and alchemy, rather than plan and determinable design. Consider home an space where things are on rotation, but not on repeat. There is pleasure and hope in chance: in destination-free wandering (thank you for writing a lovely book about this, Rebecca Solnit), in meandering conversation, in mending and amending, in cooking by intuition, in exaggerating or quieting a familiar gesture, in practicing honing in on one sense, playing with perspective. These things—walks, talks, sewing, cooking, gesturing, gazing—share a theme: they are living arts. Like aleatory art, they are not simply improvisational; rather, they intrinsically shift, and are planned only to a certain degree. Perhaps I love the domestic arts most because of they way they shift to meet our limitations and desires, the way they live, alongside us.
A children’s game of telephone is an aleatory art, as is the automatic writing and drawing of the French Surrealists, and some argue that John Cage’s chance-based music is also an aleatory art. It is even through aleatory techniques that the narrator in Sheila Heti’s remarkable book Motherhood, makes decisions. What if home, too, could be an aleatory space more often than not?
Etymology Interlude:
Aleatory: a·le·a·to·ry (adjective)
Late 17th century. Derived from the Latin “alea” for "dice” or “aleator” for ‘dice player’.
An action made by rolling the dice, via chance; flexible in it’s framework and details. The term was popularized by disparate French, Italian and Polish musical composers, but also by Mozart and Kirnberger, who played with expectations of listeners by allowing measures of musical pieces to be determined by throwing dice in order to organize sheets of music and timing cues. Aleatoricism is using chance in artistic composition.
Aleatory is not improvisation, nor indeterminate—rather it is determinable by chance.
Until next time,
Airyka