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Squeeze. Erin V. Sotak is an installation and performance artist concerned with notions of absurdity, futility, consumption, labor, and aesthetics. Her work is best described as a moving tableau that is re-rendered through the photographic process. Sotak will fabricate a new space in the Sesnon gallery using a variety of materials including wood, wall coverings, raw silk, and pomegranates. The piece revisits ideas of constraint versus restraint, seen versus unseen, interior versus exterior, and the distinct blur of the separateness of experience that occurs in a singular shared moment.

Don't ask me why the TV is blaring in the background. Generally I hate TV. I mean I really hate it. It has a lot to do with having been a really bad cable television editor for two many years. It has a lot to do with having started my career as an editor for really bad cable television editor in broadcast news. It has to do with cringing every time I hear an audio-booth recorded voice over. Or see a Queer-Eye style animated show open. Or am manipulated to stay tuned for the next half hour by the much-repeated dangling carrot of a grand deus ex machina executed in a ten-second tease.

There. I just saw a commercial for Cotton. Cotton? Yea, cotton. Pussycat Dolls. Tyra Banks. It's been a while since I tuned in. Clare Danes and The Boyfriend Trouser™. Cheese-It Stix. I recognize none of the station bugs.

The mute button. The remote. My kingdom for the remote.

The week. In fragments. My week. Just like the TV. My friend who decided to don his Tibetan prayer beads, shortly before killing himself. The toxicology report. The Vicodin in his system. His wife. His wife. Who will never be the same. His kids. His precious kids. Who I love more than warm, straight-from-the-tap maple syrup on waffles. Nothing better than to hear them giggling. Nothing more reassuring. And thank god. There are still giggles. Thank god. Even when I don't believe.

And the leaves. How quickly they grow back on the trees. As if they were never gone. And we have forgotten what the bare tree is.

How quickly. We forget.