Why the “Wide Awake Garage”?
There has been much speculation about the origin of the name “Wide Awake Garage.”
Given the universal desire to be wide awake vis-à-vis our being in the world, some have come to WAG expecting a religious association. But for me, the garage has always been a place to physicalize what I imagine—a place to build spaceships, hovercrafts, and machines capable of digging to the center of the earth.
These two elements—being aware and having a place to create—came together for me when I discovered an old photograph from the 1920s of my maternal grandfather standing in his auto garage. On the back of the photo my mother, at a young age, had written “Wide Awake Garage, Buffalo, Minnesota, Verna Lindberg.”
So the studio is named for a way of being in the world, and for my sweet and cranky grandfather.
—Daniel E. Kelm