Nicholas Pereslugoff
Profession
I developed this project in a company called “Liberty Oil” in East Hartford, Connecticut; an oil truck shop that specializes in building, repairing, and selling oil trucks and oil truck parts. My father, along with many other employees, has worked there most of his life. The space is their own, completely taken over and claimed by the workers who work there every day.
I sought to explore the connections between people, environments, and the mediation of personality between them, specifically in the context of a work place. By focusing on these themes in a work oriented environment the idea of “profession” comes to the foreground. A profession is commonly seen as a job, a career, a trade, something that one does in order to make money, to “get by.” But profession, in the sense that one is professing, is something different. A profession can also be seen as an act of expressing one’s ideas, political or religious, grand or simple; one’s habits, passions, and beliefs, and any facet of one’s character. People and environments are not complete, distinct, separately existing entities. Rather, they share a common connection through the character that they express. By examining an environment and what it professes, one can interpret a great deal about the people who inhabit it.