Danica Phelps

Home Equity Loan and what I really spent it on, 2007

The two-part drawing Home Equity, is the last section of a three-part work series in the context of buying a house with artist’s studio in Brooklyn. The work in the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection records on two panels an additional loan that Phelps was entitled to from the state. This loan is represented at the bottom edge of the grey panel: “home equity loan $ 145.000 July 2006”, and the loan is noted at the bottom of the red panel: “what I really spent the home equity loan on … including some of what I was supposed to.” Both panels show 145.000 bars, corresponding with the loan (in Phelps system, green bars stand for profit, red bars for loss). As the loan can be seen neither as a profit nor a loss in Phelps’s system, the left-hand panel works in shades of grey. The red, right-hand panel uses red bars to indicate the appropriate use of the money, for repairs or renovation. Payments that had nothing to do with the house, like day-to-day bills are captured in light orange. Together, the three parts of the work series are Danica Phelps’s most extensive project to that date.