This desk was my childhood kitchen table. It was in my mother’s kitchen, and we ate off this table, and really what we should be doing is looking at the surface of this desk, because here is a portrait of the artist who made the table. His name was Tumas. That’s the only remaining image on this table, but when he had made the table, he had made it and covered it with a whole story of my family painted into it. My mother thought my father wouldn’t like it. It was a surprise that [the artist] had done that. She had him paint over it, but he was a smart guy, so he painted it knowing that the wash that he painted it with would wash away, and that the story would come through again. If you look underneath, you can see some things. Underneath is my mother, and she’s pregnant with me holding my brother’s hand. Eventually my mother told me and my brother to move the table out underneath the porch, and then it got exposed to the elements for years. [The paint] started to wash away—the coat that covered what he had originally painted—and the image underneath started to come through. So then when I moved into my first apartment, I said, “I think I need that table.” And she says, “It’s under the porch. Go get it.” —MATT DILLON (AS TOLD TO KATHERINE SLINGLUFF AND JOHN NEWSOM
