When successful people are asked about the key to their achievements, the most common response is hard work.  While often true, this response misses an important assumption; that success is possible in the first place.  Our thinking, dreams and actions are, in part, shaped by our surroundings.  Having grown up in a low income environment, I watched people who were smart and capable stay in the same ‘hood because that is what they knew.  This idea that we stick to what we know has been a constant source of inquiry and deliberation for me in the last few years. 

More recently, I became focused on the relationship of the artist to the notion of accountability.  Who, as artists, do we make work for?  I became frustrated with the pretension and fiction so often wrapped up with the idea of art.  Throughout this struggle, it remained clear that art is good at showing the something else, something unknown or a new way to look at the familiar. 

Last year I had the opportunity to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.  Once her home and now a museum, it reveals a life literally surrounded by art.  She woke up next to, took a shower near and drank coffee under world class artwork.  I couldn’t help wondering how this immersion affected her daily life.  How it shaped her world views and colored her day to day interactions.

Art of Home was started to use art to inspire young people to dream of success, however defined, and question things that were taken for granted.