JW: My whole [upholstery] shop was only three colors: yellow, white and black. I had this yellow van, and I dressed in yellow and black when I picked up the furniture, and all my tools were yellow, white and black. It was pretty cool. I got so much into the cartooniness of the business, almost to the point of it being a joke to the people who would see me, and they wouldn’t really trust me to do a good job.
BLVR: They thought you were kidding about the whole thing.
JW: Yeah. I starting trying to make an art form out of giving someone a bill for my services, like writing it with crayon on a piece of paper, or having a yellow piece of paper with black marker saying “You owe me $300.” People would be like “What the hell is this?” and I’d be like “I don’t know, I just want you to sign this and give it back to me and pay me, and that way I can have it as a… um…” People just didn’t dig it. It was two different worlds colliding. When I’d re-upholster furniture I’d take off the old fabric and I started to write poems and things inside the furniture, so if it was ever re-upholstered again one day they’d get little messages from the last person who upholstered it. I thought it’d be cool if we all wrote each other messages.
