In 2011, my wife (then girlfriend) and I bought a three-story rowhouse in East Kensington. We had no idea what we were doing, but embarked on gutting and renovating the house room-by-room. After five years it’s still an ongoing project, and we’ve made all manner discoveries along the way. We’re both artists, and one of the pleasant surprises as we demolished old walls was the 120-plus-year-old studs that these walls were made from. The wood is tightly grained, because these trees grew much slower than our factory-farmed forests today. Over time, I’ve been salvaging this material, and using it both for furniture around the house, and as material in my artwork. As I was cutting down the stud this segment came from, the entire knot popped out, leaving behind this wonderful wooden vortex. The house, and this piece of wood, have become a nice bridge between art and life as we renovate and create the space we live in.