one kynthia’s trash, another kynthia’s treasure?
i’ve been cleaning my house some tonight, which is GOOD, and i am struck by something that always strikes me when i am cleaning: i keep too much sentimental crap, but even admitting that doesn’t make it easy for me to throw it away.
the thing is, even as i look at something and go “whoa! i do NOT need that.” it makes me think about whatever it was that i was doing when i got it, and so its purpose as a memento is fulfilled, and keeping it in the first place is somehow justified, so keeping it for the future? well…
so i have decided that i need to take more forceful action on an idea that i had this summer. this summer it was specifically about vacations. when i go on vacation i tend to keep stupid stuff for at least a little while – maps, flyers, rocks… whatever detritus happens to accumulate that has some unique connection to the trip. at the end of a trip i tend to have a little pile of stuff in the car, or my bag, or my pocket, or wherever, that i’m not ready to part with yet, so i keep it, and it ends up somewhere when i get home. since i’ve learned that i really don’t do anything with this stuff, i’ve started to get harder on myself about keeping it, but this summer i decided i should do something different. i told myself that i could keep whatever i want, but then i had to make a collage out of whatever i kept within a month, or i had to throw it away. i really like making collages, you see, and over the past few years i’ve seen enough really creative ones in the art world that i’ve had to admit to myself that it doesn’t just Have to be a throwback to my childhood that i save for the times when i have a three year old to humor. i’ve tried to tell myself that i should indulge the interest and play with it a bit more to see whether i do anything cool. but i never find the time.
so this seemed like a perfect plan. it would give me an incentive to do some artistic exploration, provide an outlet for my strange desire to accumulate receipts, and possibly generate items of some artistic interest, which are much more useful than shoeboxes full of crap, and which would actually probably lead to me encountering the items themselves more often, because they would be fun to look at. so it’s win-win-win.
it didn’t work, though.
i got sidetracked and missed my deadline.
but i still think i am going to keep trying, because i really like the idea.
what i decided today, though, was that i shouldn’t stop with trips. i should just consider All my old trinkets and slips of paper to be art supplies, and start making stuff out of them as a means of preserving the memorabilia by actually putting it to use.
this sounds fun, but i also admit that, artistic aspirations aside, i had flashes of new piles of crappy junk collages that all kind of look the same, but that i don’t want to throw away because they contain bazooka wrappers in hebrew or something. the one good thing about piles of junk is that it’s easy to stow into boxes and shove under the bed. so if i start making mediocre art out of it (and by mediocre i mean that i’ll go “ok, that was fun,” but then want to put it in a closet so that people won’t see it), will it actually become More of a hassle?! i mean, i don’t want to turn into that guy on npr whose entire house was decorated with homemade bob dylan memorabilia. that would be weird.
so there are risks involved, but i’ve decided that i should embark upon the experiment anyway and see what happens. if you have any clever ideas for things that i might make (not all of the objects are 2-dimensional, so some measure of sculpting will be involved), or surfaces that i might cover, you should let me know.
and if i succeed, i will post pictures, even if afterwards i ask you not to speak of them ever again.
:)