The story of my painting “Spigot” is tied to my funky house in Fairfax, California. I don’t know the history of the house, but one thing is clear: at some point an Italian family lived in it and they had a thing for patio decorations. I’m not talking about the popular garden gnome, although we do have one. I’m talking about statues of a deer perching on the wall; a frog, turtle, and bear casually ambling in the now defunct pond; birds everywhere; and my favorite, the plaster squirrel once attached to one of three giant elm trees, now almost completely swallowed by its bark. A small shrine with a bell houses the Virgin Mary and Saint Francis of Assisi. The Italians also left concrete benches with their names embedded in white stones: Edna and Enrico. In addition to their patio decoration panache, I suspect that they grew lush vegetation given that every five to ten feet in the beds that line the perimeter there is a spigot. None of them work. Over the years the English ivy has taken over the walls that surround the patio, and moss and lichen make their home in the crevices of all the patio creatures. The spigots in particular have tarnished in the most expressive ways. I observed the spigot in my painting for several months before I decided to paint it. I noticed how the moisture clung to it as if refusing to accept its disrepair, leaving paths and creating marks for me to paint. I particularly liked that the brand name of its manufacturer was still somewhat visible, reminding me of Edna and Enrico’s benches. I decided that I too wanted to claim a place in the history of this small enclosure, and that is how “Spigot” came to be.