With the economy the way it is, how many people have a positive response to art made from trash? To work that uses "recycled" material (such as my own): discards, broken things, old and scarred items.
Do the people who like "found object art" themselves collect found objects? Are they flea market junkies or maybe those that comb the trash piles on "big trash item" days?
Is it true that as our "recession" deepens, folks find themselves more repulsed by items reminding them of just how close they are to living on the street? Or is the reverse true-that people find it easier to identify with work that uses recycled material because in fact they're being pressed by their wallets to "reuse, repurpose, recycle"?
Although never a "hard core" (read politically active) recycler, I feel lucky that I can reduce the waste stream somewhat and do so as aggressively as possible. For me it's simple logic that you should do so by any means available: we'll probably be swimming in our own waste soon enough. And future generations will drown in it. Just a fact -it takes no real genius to figure this out.
So back to the original question-d'ya think we "found object" folks are gonna look to be the good guys or the bad guys given this current economic atmosphere?
That's the Trickster god, Mercury...The title of the piece is "Moik", as I always did like a good nickname.
4 comments:
Unsure if this is a rhetorical question, but since I'm a concrete kinda girl, I'll go ahead and give my two cents. I'll also go ahead and speak for "the people" as if I have that kind of authority. We (the people) see magic and mystery and emotion when we look at your sculpture. Perhaps much later when it is hanging on our wall or sitting on our table we really take in all the separate ingenious components. With regard to some new assemblage novice who decides to throw stuff together to symbolize the dire state of the economy....we (the peope) will compare that uninspiring pile with your work and look disdainfully at the newbee.
I forgot to include my answer to the question about whether people in your fan base tend to collect treasures. I'll just speak for myself at this point. I can tell you that just last week at work I had a receptionist call the telephone workers to tell them that "someone is trying to steal their phone wire". A co-worker, who was aware of my hoarding tendencies told me about this really neat colored wire that was in the trash can in the conference room. I lost little time in gaining the key to said room and attempting to rush off with my hoard. I would have gotten away clean if the eagle-eyed receptionist hadn't caught sight of my treasure. The happy ending is that the phone guys didn't want the wire, so it is all mine. I also confronted my friend the receptionist regarding "where's the love in tattling on me like that?" I will actually swoon over anything rusty. I have been known to cross several lanes of traffic on foot to retrieve a lamp my son fancied on the side of the road. I have also incurred taunting by other co-workers who thought it very funny to start bringing me rocks and uninspiring trash when they found out how excited I would get when finding something twisted and rusty in the parking lot. Please don't think all your fans are quite as apt to jump into a dumpster. I'm sure some of them have a fair amount of self pride.
Thanks Stalker-
I do wonder about "the people" being left unmoved by anything with found stuff in it. There were always folks who wouldn't set foot in a flea market or by a roadside pile of goodies-fair enough-but has this/will this increase at all given the economic state we're in (or purported to be in)? Or just the opposite?
Many is the time I have been thrilled to find something that someone else had thrown away that (to me) was possessed of great visual beauty. I could no more walk away and leave it to its fate than if it had been a baby bird. To be able to incorporate such finds into one's own creations, as you have done-- and to give them new context, new life, new meaning,and transform their original purpose well, that's...... ART!
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