Curiosity unbound, an artist fixes locks
It’s perfectly sensible, I would suggest, that English and philosophy majors get jobs fixing locks. And, no, not because they have no other opportunities. There’s always fast food. Locks and keys are metaphors for life, helping us protect and hide, open and release. Shakespeare featherpenned: “’Tis in my memory lock’d, and you yourself shall keep the key of it,” with Dickens goose-quilling: “A very little key will open a very heavy door,” and Wittgenstein declaring what I tried declaring — that “philosophical problems can be compared to locks and safes.”
Which brings us to Hana Jimenez, 29, of Squirrel Hill, who works the Construction Junction cash register with a side gig fixing mortise locks — the ones inside metal boxes tucked into the recesses of a door.
In these dangerous times, locks get serious action. When old ones break, people seem to take them to Construction Junction for repair or replacement.
So Hana figured out how they work and began fixing them by using deductive reasoning to solve these clever mechanical puzzles. Turning the key activates springs, gears, thingamajigs, doohickeys and whatchamacallits that shift the bolt to the lock or unlock position.
He charges $5 to fix them, and if he can’t, “I just give it back,” he said.
What really caught my attention was that Hana majored in philosophy.
Neither Plato, Aristotle nor Nietzsche taught us how to fix locks. But the study of knowledge, reality and existence should provide some tools to unmask the mysteries of bolting and unbolting doors.
“I was piddling around with locks for a couple months and found a box of broken ones and began working on them,” he said. “I started looking at them and taking them apart to understand what was in there and how to fix them. I try to take photos of the interiors.”
One person, for example, scrambled a lock’s innards by trying to pry open the metal cover rather than unscrewing it. Obviously, that person never studied philosophy. Undoing that hardware omelet led to Hana’s diagnosis of a missing part, which he fixed with a spare part and earned a fin.
Old locks made of iron and brass can last a century or more. New locks of aluminum and even plastic may not last a few years, he said, recommending that people buy antique ones.
More importantly, Hana is a woodblock printmaker. That explains his participation, beginning Thursday, in the Queer Ecology Hanky Project, an art show at the Irma Freeman Center, 5006 Penn Ave. in Garfield. A hanky upon which he did a print is in the show.
This son of Cuban parents graduated in 2013 from Oberlin College in Cleveland, where he participated in rugby, fencing, semi-improvisational theater, and the publication of poetry and science fiction, among other activities.
After graduation, he and friends fled Cleveland and landed in Pittsburgh, where one continued her education. He found work in food service before taking the Construction Junction job in April.
“We didn’t want to live in a big city on either coast — and not in Cleveland because it was too close to college — and so we’ve been living here ever since,” he said. “I wasn’t looking for something like this [job], but as soon as I moved here, I learned about Construction Junction.”
The Point Breeze nonprofit sells surplus building materials and architectural relics, so it’s the ideal place for meandering handymen and -women.
Hana — most inspired by nihilist philosophers Albert Camus and Michel Foucault — said he aspires to make his living as an artist.
“Philosophy has not helped me here [at work], but it has contributed to my being curious,” he said.
The need for a mortise lock repairman was apparent. After tinkering with them, he began repairing them and has logged 90 successful repairs and counting, along with a growing inventory of parts.
Locks and keys pervade human life, literature, philosophy and culture. They help us physically and psychologically. They represent the binding and freeing of heart, body and mind.
“Rather than give politicians keys to cities, we should change the locks,” wrote Doug Larson, a columnist in, of all places, Door County, Wis. French poetphilosopher Paul Valery describes a person of sound mind as one who “keeps the inner madman under lock and key.”
So here comes Hana, who solved the mortise lock puzzle for the betterment of society. If a politician leaves, or you need to tame an inner madman or madwoman, or you simply need to lock a broken door, seek him out.
He’s at the cash register, this artist schooled in philosophy. He’s curious. He’s interesting. Best of all, he fled Cleveland for Pittsburgh.
We can only hope that fixing locks provides him a key to opportunity.