What Marcel Dzama’s Teen Son Can’t Live Without

My son was into my old cassette tapes because I had so many and they were so retro to him, so we started listening to them and recording a lot of music on this together. My son writes songs and I play guitar. I’ve been teaching him guitar, but he’s the singer and he likes to sing covers too. Sometimes, we’ll actually record on my iPhone and then I’ll transfer it onto the cassette player, and it gets this old kind of soft home-recording sound. You can actually hear the record button go down. It’s not as tinny as an iPhone recording.

He plays saxophone as well. If you put a microphone into the saxophone with the reverb into the cassette player, it gets this almost distortion-pedal sound. We’ll transfer the cassette back to digital, and then it has that softer feel. And then we’ll make little music videos and things like that. I did a performance withPerformawhere he sang a song about our lost cat. Then Performa was asking for something for a fundraiser. So we made a long music video for it.

This lantern has a phone charger and a solar panel, which is so great when you’re off the grid. We kayak to this island that kinda has nothing there. So it’s useful in case I take a lot of videos and pictures and need to charge my phone a little bit just so it’s not dead when we get back. And if the lantern falls in the water or whatever, I don’t care that much because they’re not that expensive.

We make a lot of sculptures and masks out of cardboard and other materials with this glue gun. We probably have five of them around the house and studio and garage. Sometimes we use them to make cardboard boats too. We were kind of doing some bad stuff with the boats, though. We were putting fireworks into the boats and blowing them up a little bit. But we were far away from other people, and we cleaned up the mess. This glue gun is always hot, while the other ones don’t get hot enough, and then your stuff comes apart quite easily. Like the glue doesn’t glue that well. The one bad thing is you can burn yourself quite easily with it. And if it does get on your skin, you get those terrible blisters. So you have to be careful.

When my son was younger, I would give him my pencil after I had used it to the point where it was only two inches big, and he loved using those for his own drawings. Now that he’s older, he likes using them before I wear them so far down. I love that you don’t have to press very hard on them and they leave a great mark. I think they are architectural pencils, but they’re great for drawing. When I was at the Philadelphia Museum, I bought a bunch ofMarcel Duchamp versions of this pencil. Those are our favorites. I’m a huge fan.

This is a great, colorful, bright spray paint that is perfect for sculptures and cardboard or plastic or even glass and clay. We use it a lot on cardboard, papier-mâché costumes, or sculptures. We only use this when we’re in Long Island because we can make messier sculptures out there. The colors are brighter and more impactful than other spray paints, and the trigger doesn’t fill up as fast. The opening must be a little bit wider or something. Other spray paints can get clogged really easily if you use it and stop and then you try to use it again.

This is also for collage or sculptures. We like how the tape isn’t that shiny; it’s more matte. I use it for everything, and he loves it as well. It’s kind of got this creamy look to it. We do a lot of scrapbook kinds of things. And I don’t like when the tape shows and gets reproduced in my books. Pencil goes on top of it really nicely. Sometimes I save the little green tartan-plaid pieces at the beginning of the roll of tape.

These are great for cutting cardboard. But I would say probably don’t let your kid use it until they’re at least 7 or 8. You do have to be careful with them. And teach them how to use it. There’s a lock on the back so you can open it for them and just have just a little bit of a tip that’s coming out so you won’t injure yourself, and if it does break, it won’t really cut you too bad.

We both love this shampoo; it keeps our hair dandruff-free. It was recommended to me by David Zwirner back in the day.Everybody in his family uses this. When we went to visit their place when they first opened, they had like ten bottles in their bathroom, I was like, “What is that?” I really like the smell. It feels like it was probably made in the 1920s or earlier, even. It feels like someone was just grinding up roots. But it has become pricey since the tariffs. It was really easy to get before, and now it’s gone up almost $10. They have it at thatpharmacy on Sixth Avenue that’s kind of popular. I can’t remember what it’s called. My wife used to get her prescriptions there because we used to live over there.

This dog ball glows in the dark, so it is easy to find and we can play fetch with our dog in the late evening. And actually, if you throw it in a lake, it’s easy to see too. My dog loves chewing on it, and it has a hole in the middle so he can breathe while he is chewing it too. So he just holds it in his mouth and he can bark through it. My wife bought it, and I was complaining that it was too expensive. But she was like, “No, it is so good.”

I bought this mini youth acoustic guitar for my son for Christmas about six years ago or whenever that movieCococame out. He loved it and I taught him to play a few songs on it, but I also enjoy playing it. It’s also really good for kayaking because it’s super portable. And the strings are easy to hold down, which makes it easy to learn on. I think 80 percent of the songs we’ve recorded together are with this guitar.