Kuslansky Electrical Supply was my family’s business, founded in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1923 and closed in 1964. Naming the site after it was less about the business than its spirit. It was its physical and social worlds that shaped who I became as an artist.

Inside, a plywood counter bore a burnished record of forty years of exchange. Behind it, metal shelves held electrical parts and coils of wire. I remember the oily smell of BX cable clattering across the worn diamond-plate floor, my father spooling it from a giant wooden drum and cutting it against faded yellow measuring marks. Orders were called across the store, customers lingered at the counter to schmooze, and legendary deli parties punctuated the work.

But the real magic was crossing from this industrial world of wire and metal into the lighting showroom: a frozen constellation of crystal chandeliers, floor lamps, and sconces. Along one wall, O-gauge Lionel trains seemed to wait for departure, their miniature passengers poised for passage.

Years later, I understood how deeply the experience of the store informed my artistic sensibility: that light could shape atmosphere, objects could carry drama, and space and current could feel alive.