Found Objects

A while ago I posted about the tire swing on highway 102 (which has miraculously reappears, in case you were wondering). I have always really liked found objects. As a kid I remember bringing all sorts of junk home. Some of it could be used as a toy or game, but most was just a hunk of machinery or electrical equipment that looked too cool to part with. Maybe most kids are like that.

As an adult, I don't bring the stuff home any more. I've realized somehow that I appreciate objects in the context where I find them. Even pretty stones and shells only serve as souvenirs of a particularly nice walk on the beach, rather than look overwhelmingly pleasing or interesting, once I pick them up and take them away from their location. I mean, they don't start looking ugly but they just don't hold that same facination. I guess, either you know what I mean or you don't.

That's one reason I like Andy Warhol's stuff. Essentially he worked with found objects, and either chose ones that could be de-contextualized wholesale (Brillo Boxes) or he could re-contextualize with repetition (Soup Cans), anachronism (VU's banana album cover), or medium (the movie Empire). I think that's art. It is certainly something that I cannot do -- even under the best circumstances I can't move found objects without wrecking the effect.

Not that I usually want to. Yesterday I was walking back from the office in the rain and in the middle of the sidewalk was a sheaf of human hair. It was as if a woman stood in the middle of the sidewalk and chopped off the pony-tail she had been growing since high school. It was about a foot long, brunette, fine, and rather healthy looking hair. At least it looked that way in the rain.

On the sidewalk of a city street it was facinating. Again, as with all of my favorite found objects, it suggested questions and stories with no answers or endings. It would not be nearly as interesting in a box in my garage and would definitely be more creepy.

Cheers