Brent Baumgartner hardly has any work. He’s something past thirty years and prolific, both in sculpture (soft, hard, Sculpey, latex body casts) and painting. “But most of the stuff is gone. I mean, painted over, or just gone.” Only the slides of much of his work remain.

What the Corcoran grad has left is meager, propped in the corner of his one bedroom apartment and studio. The place is treacherous, a hazard to his work as much as his lazy archives. Enter the room without looking up and you’ll knock over the canvas he’s working on. But look up, avoid the canvas, and you’ll step on his glass oil palette that lays on the floor. The windows are covered up – the view is a brick wall two yards away – and a bottle of ear-plugs sits on the desk, with used pairs strewn on his bedside table. “I complained about the neighbors… now they stomp on the ground and play music even louder.”