COSTA MESA HOUSE TURNED INTO ARTWORK : A MAN’S HOME IS HIS SCULPTURE

New York artists Kate Ericson and Melvin Ziegler make a habit of manipulating an environment and turning it into art. Working separately and together, they’ve given a Houston library a new facade, created a landscape by transporting trees to an exhibit space and constructed a rock wall that weaved its way through a house.

The artists’ most recent project geared to a specific site is “House Monument,” now under construction in Costa Mesa at 215 East 20th St. Ron and Diane Khatiblou are building a home there with wood purchased from Ziegler and Ericson. The artists have inscribed the wood with handwritten quotes from literature, myths and songs, all making reference to the nature of a house. “With this project we play with the convention of a house,” Ziegler said in an interview. “But we don’t alter it like an architect would but address what ‘house’ means psychologically and sociologically. We manipulate what exists in a conceptual way but don’t interfere physically with it.

Although not involved in the construction, the artists periodically visit the site.

The artists conceived the project in two parts: The first was an exhibit at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art during April and May in which the 1,300 pieces of wood that constitute most of the framework of the Khatiblous’ house were displayed. The second half of the project involves the wood returning to its “use factor” by serving as construction material.

The Costa Mesa couple purchased the wood, according to Ron Khatiblou, because “the idea appealed to me. It’s not often that I build a house. I want to make it special.” Khatiblou says his house will be completed in September.

Earlier this year, Ziegler and Ericson collected quotes from books, songs, myths and other sources at UCLA’s research library. The handwritten quotes, all unattributed, are from the works of 200 poets, authors, psychologists and architects, including, say the artists, Emily Dickinson, Carl Jung, Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Flannery O’Connor and Henry David Thoreau.

While researching the project, the artists were concerned not only with aesthetics, but how the concept of “house and home” has been interpreted historically.

“We’re trying to dissect how a metaphor--in this case, one relating to a house--is established,” Ericson said in an interview. “The project is based on the idea of seeing language as ornamental, visually or metaphorically.”

“Through these quotes we want to address what makes a house a home,” Ziegler said. “We wanted to examine the whole psychology of a house. Once you build a wall, how does that determine how you are affected by it?

“I think it’s really hard to determine what time in history the quotes were written. Over the years when people have talked about house or home they’ve addressed it in a number of ways--romantically, psychologically and using a practical view. There are all these different standards, yet the views have remained very similar. Similar themes came up over and over again in reading literature. For instance, we found 30 variations on the theme of a house as a castle.”

Ericson, who was born in New York, and Ziegler, from Campbelltown, Pa., met at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1978, where they both received bachelor’s degrees in sculpture. Each went on to Cal Arts to earn master’s degrees in sculpture.

Now that the inscribed wood has been cut and nailed together to create the framework of the Khatiblous’ house, the quotes often collide with one another to create new sentences. Ziegler says that this “new text” of “fragmented history” gives the project another facet. “It will be like a ruin, in that one day it will eventually be exposed again, and people will try to make sense out of it.”