Statement

quo.tid.i.an (kwo-tid’i-en), adj. [ME. quotidien; OFr. cotidian;

L. quotidianus < quotidie, daily < quotus, how many + dies, day],

1: daily; recurring every day (~fever) 2: belonging to every day (~routine)

3: commonplace, ordinary (~drabness)

n. anything, especially a fever that recurs daily.

The installation “quotidian” celebrates chance and recognizes the mutability of time. Some days are long and full, others pass barely noticed. A certain date is etched in memory; others are remembered furtively or preciously or with trembling as the anniversary approaches. “quotidian” presents a 365-day calendar of commonplace objects.

By collecting and organizing the results of a routine but calculated search and collection, symbolized most acutely in the date tags from loaves of bread, I ask the viewer to consider the usually inconspicuous. Each object represents sorting a particular from the landscape of ordinary life. I separate certain items from the visual field of daily experience to bring forward the act of noticing. I am also very aware of that moment of finding and deciding.

The display of small, forgotten and ordinary detritus (receipts, ticket stubs, messages from unknown friends found on a sidewalk, a metal clasp, a rubber washer) brings the everyday or discarded object into focus. The display of these objects on one wall contrasts and is complemented by an opposite wall of cabbage leaves—leaves of the most ordinary of vegetables—which have been dried and hung as a collection. Taken out of their ordinary context they are seen in a new way. The installation presents a document of daily activity and of chance intersections of serendipity and purpose. The undifferentiated quotidian is transformed.

—Odile Dix