THE DAY I STOPPED WAITING

How I learned to really live in the moment

In 2016, I lost my father in a tragic fire at our home in Old Chatham, NY. It was the scariest, most surreal day of my life—and the rest of my family, including me, almost died along with him.

I learned the hard way that life is shorter than we think. We never know how long we have.

So I made a conscious decision to stop saying the phrase “one day.”
One day when the time is right, I’ll…
One day when I have more money, I’ll…

I’m an artist—an abstract painter—and since the 1990s, when I rented my first studio in NYC, I began to understand a pattern: artists carve out the next up-and-coming neighborhoods… and then get displaced when gentrification begins.

I moved from studio to studio—Astor Place, the East Village, Dumbo, East Hampton, Inglewood. Each time, eventually, I had to leave.

That’s when the idea first took hold:
One day, I would buy a building.

A place I could carve into artist studios, with a central space that could function as a gallery or event venue. A space no one could take from me because a landlord decided to sell to the highest bidder.

In 2019, I decided to create my own destiny and started looking for a building in West Adams, Los Angeles—an up-and-coming neighborhood that felt full of possibility.

I quickly realized it would be difficult to sustain the space by renting only to artists. So I pivoted. The vision evolved into a venue I could rent for events and photo/video shoots—while also housing my interior design office.

There wasn’t enough room for my art studio—but that was okay.

I was excited to gut renovate and design a space that would become both a showpiece of my work and a source of income—a creative space and a smart investment.

I had never done anything of this scale before. The process of walking through spaces and imagining what they could become was exhilarating.

I was nervous. I had no experience running an event or production space.

But I took the leap anyway.

Because life is short.

Lacuna was born the moment I stopped waiting.

*Thank you for reading the first entry of the Lacuna Log. I’ll be sharing more stories, insights, and behind-the-scenes moments from Lacuna regularly, so stay tuned.