HA: I want everything to have a sense of scarring or a history so it doesn't seem false, even if it's man-made or fabricated. I still want it to carry the same element of the theatrical, which sort of relates to the idea of the cabinet of curiosities, which involved a lot of tweaking and faking and claiming that things were what they're not. Even with objects that are found, real things, I want them to take on a campy falseness too, where there's just no way it's actually a shrunken head.

NW: Does the new repulse you?

HA: It doesn't repulse me, it just doesn't engage me. I don't like the flatness of new things. Often when something is old, it takes on a different life or a different feel, even if it's something as mundane as an old book or a chunk of wood. When something's been run over by a car, it takes on a second vein; even if the history of the object is only 15 minutes long, the more that happens to it, the more complex it becomes. To me, something that's perfect and shiny is ugh.