I make my arty things out of stuff which could be stated as “crossed the rainbow bridge” (I keep wondering – isn’t that the bridge between Midgard and Asgard?). If not becoming part of one of my creations, they would be buried in a landfill along with bags of dog poop and used diapers. One must admit that is a much better fate, even for a blender with a burned out motor.
Where do I get this stuff? Some is home sourced – that is household things break down, or wear out, or just aren’t useful any more and are sufficiently crappy that even thrift stores would throw it into the trash.
My Junk
For example, in early 2024, my ancient Sony stereo (one with a hundred input jacks) just stopped powering up. This particular unit having been built in the 1980s, there was little chance that a repair was possible, much less economical. Ditto with a more ancient CD player – after decades of honorable service, something plastic inside dried out, became brittle and broke. So to the workbench they went to be dissected for useful components. In this context, “useful components” means those deemed endowed with the possibility for artistic reuse.
Since I grew up with a soldering gun in one hand, I see some of the electronic components as also viable for continued service for their original purpose. Hence I have quite a collection of salvaged potentiometers (aka volume controls), switches of various types, knobs, buttons, cables, connectors and so forth. Some end up in my more complex creations serving their original purpose, or as techy decorations elsewhere.
Your Junk
Another favorite source is thing discarded by others. In our neck of the woods there are often various items sitting on the curb. Often this is the way for people to “donate” their excess and/or defunct stuff to the world at large. On the curb means “Please get this junk off our lawn. We really don’t want to throw it away and it’s too much trouble to take over to Goodwill”. Often the object in question is expired furniture, which is not currently much of interest to me – with notable exceptions – I have acquired a number of storage cabinets and a hand-built outdoor table (previous usage unknown) for only the effort to transport them up the street to our house (alright, sometimes they need a “bit” of TLC to compensate for their state of nearly falling apart, but one can work wonders with screws and glue).
Sometimes very strange things end up at the curb – such as large screen old-school television sets (complete with lead-lined Cathode Ray Tube display), radios, vacuum cleaners and other home appliances or entertainment gear.
Junk or Art Supplies?
Sometimes I acquire an object because I know there is something interesting inside that I know I can do something with. Sometimes it’s because I immediately think “Hey, I think this would go well with this other stuff I’ve got”, or “Finally, the missing piece!”. This projection can lead to finding yourself with a substantial collection of unfinished puzzles just waiting for that final piece to drop in.
I am a very visual person – I see things not just as they are, but as they might be. Actually sometimes I don’t care about what they are, I just see what they could be.
This, of course, can lead to an extensive collection of stuff, turning one’s storage space into a mutation of The Island Of Misfit Toys (or a Big Pile of Junk – however you want to score it). There exists a continual tension between things which have not yet revealed their final destination – either the display shelf or the landfill (or possible re-donate to the place I got them from).
Case Study
In due course I obtained an expired manual typewriter and after dissecting it looked at the shell and said “Hey, if I cut this in half, these would make great feet for something big”, and then the bicycle fork declares “Those Shall Be My Feet”. Well, who am I to dispute the word of the bicycle fork? So I bisected the typewriter shell which resulted in a perfect pair of feet.(BTW, old manual typewriters are a cornucopia of parts just begging to become art supplies).
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What The Future May Bring
Although Her Majesty has been “complete” for several years now, she is not carved on stone tablets – there is always the notion that more will be revealed / she will demand more, and some updates could be in order. I was not proliferate with lighting when she came to be, and I just got a whiff of what she could look like with some red LEDs on her “crown”. Or one large light as her “Ye shall know who I am” indicator. Or maybe not.
Leonardo Da Vinci famously said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Sometimes we just have to say “it’s done – for now” and move on. I would like to say this is easy for me, and to a certain extent it is – when something I’m working on says “enough”, I know to listen and stop. It is so easy and tempting to keep adding more decorations, puff it up a bit, then another bit, then another. You don’t get things “done” that way.
But does a piece decide that it could use some gussying up? Or is it that I realize that I finally have something much better (ok, maybe just a bit better?) to go with that piece, or did it project this notion into my mind? Silly question on the surface, and of course we know (because we’re the species with the really big brain) that a construct of plastic and superglue cannot reach into our minds – of course not.
So the idea comes from us – we see what is in front of us and our brains pulls an image out of our memory bank and attaches it to a specific selection of reality – the aforementioned construct of plastic and super glue and we see a future version of it.
Our imagination time travels ahead to another tick of the clock and the reality has been altered just the right amount in just the right place. There’s a shiny cowboy hat on the head of that robot over there and you’ve sure it’s been wearing it since the birth of the Universe, even though you have never seen the hat.
How does one reconcile this vision of the times to come and what appears in front of you at this moment? Enter search mode – I have seen the future and must make it happen.
The work is never done – it’s not really abandoned. It’s on hiatus. It’s time for a new future appearance has yest to manifest.
Shouter to Dead Parrots 