Am I A Hoarder? Saving Stuff For Making Art

Am I a Hoarder? Saving Stuff for Making Art

Oh, the potential of objects, for making art. Their shapes, textures and possibilities... The flotsam and jetsam of everyday life, natural & man-made, call to me. Yet, the first of the year desire to clean up, organize and pare down has hit me hard. But, the urge to re-purpose is fueled by weird guilt, especially after trips to the landfill, where much too much is wasted and thrown away.

I do my best to humanely keep mice out of the studio and, thank goodness that there are no pack rats there, except for me. This has become a problem, not so much for drawing and painting, but from when I began to make assemblages and installations.

Here are some of the items & rationale for saving. Out of the house or from the great outdoors and into the studio they go:

• a bucket of sticks, a pail of rocks, in case needed during the winter, abundant outside, but buried under 2 feet of snow. For drawing? For assemblages? For photographing? Gotta have 'em.
  
  
• Used electric fence wire & tape. Telephone wire, new and rusted wire of all gauges. Oh, the potentials for fastening found objects? Jewelry-making? fixing things around the house and ranch and wire horses-to-be.
  
  
• Pencil stubs, 1”-3” long. Hey, I've seen some cool pieces made with them. Better save.
  
  
• Skulls and a variety of bones. Seashells that I collected and have had since I was twelve, too many decades ago. Same, as above.
  
  

• Forty corks, from kitchen drawer to studio. My artist friend Laura snorts and says “Only forty? That's all? I have over 400.” Me? Maybe I'm not a hoarder, after all.
  
  
• Clear plastic lettuce containers, purchased when there are no greens in the garden. [Here, about 91/2 months of the year.] Saved for future installations and for holding water. Lids make nice small palettes for art students. You never know.
  
  

• Jars of many sizes. For paint, of course. And, for holding the assortment of nails, screws and other fasteners that I've collected, both used and new, all previously discarded and scarfed up by me.
  
  
• Horseshoes, horsehair, head gaskets. A huge bellows that I can barely move. Old doors, broken chairs, machinery parts, rusty ranching implements. Bed springs. Rusted tools. Some of these will accompany the other rusty pieces that are portions of my garden fences. Do they scare the rodents? If only, but they do deter the deer.
  

So, I am still not sure whether or not I'm a hoarder or just a person who makes art that is fascinated by the potentials, shapes, textures and colors of many things and by the endless new ways that they can be combined and what sort of statement can be made. In the meantime, while I am fortunate enough to have storage space, I'll do the usual. Go to the studio. Build a fire. Have strong intentions to clean, sort and re-organize. Get distracted by what I'm working on and not clean, sort and re-organize, until I can't move through the space. Hey, being excited about making art is much more fun. I just hope that I don't die first and leave a mess for someone else to deal with.