My father was a carpenter. My partner is a carpenter. His brother is a carpenter. Their father is a retired carpenter. My father would take me to work with him. I learned how to hammer a nail before I was five years old. Jim Dine’s grandfather ran a hardware store in Cincinnati. He went to live with his grandparents when he was twelve, which cemented his life-long relationship with hand-tools and everyday objects. He has said, “I feel the mystery of tools, the romance of tools not having been designed, but having evolved through use. For that reason, they are beautiful. They are also metaphorical. A screwdriver isn’t always a screwdriver.” Tools are objects that make the world possible—the houses we live in, the buildings we work in, barns, churches, trains, cars. Hyperallergic: “For Dine, there is neither a gap between art and life (as with Robert Rauschenberg) nor a disdain for labor (as with Andy Warhol).” In the art of Jim Dine, “the subject is essentially the act of working.” He keeps a tight schedule of 9 to 3, an hour break, then he works again until 6. He works every day, except for travelling days for exhibits and events. Sometimes he embeds real objects into his art, such as a large bust of a man with a head full of tools (My Puzzled Mind) in his recent exhibit in Italy, “Dog on the Forge.” In the exhibit, another bronze sculpture consists of two large hammers resting together. The hammers are the size of people, lying on the floor, resting, one crossed over the other. It is called A Beautiful Day (with Cats) Two Hammers (Creeley).
-Morgan English