Jacob’s House

From June 1987 through November 1994, I documented the artist Jacob Knight, along with his family, Friends, muses, his house and studio. A self-taught and accomplished artist, Knight was a legend to many in New England. During my first years visiting his house in West Brookfield, MA, I set apart time to extrapolate curiosities from his yard, barn and house. I had boundless material to pick from—Jacob was a hoarder of epic proportions and had access to the local dump. There, he excavated through piles of discards, bringing back select items that found a place in his life to admire. To me, I saw raw material to create personal narratives. With Jacob’s encouragement, I set up a make-shift studio in his barn, working in a baroque manner, I’d spend days gathering artifacts, visually and metaphorically locking them together until satisfied. This project ended mid-1988, where I came to a dead end—exhausting any new ideas. From that point onward, I continued to visit Jacob. By 1990 until 1994 I invited him to stay with me on Martha’s Vineyard. October of 1994 Jacob died from complications of alcoholism, he was 56 years old.