Despite that some people find it repellent I sometimes (often) pick up things off the ground and pocket them. The children across the street recently were aghast (or jealous?) when they saw me going through the garbage that had spilled from the can and collecting doll shoes, a hello kitty pez dispenser and a toy "Wild Rose Princess" cell phone (that still works). My favorite things to find are small toys, pieces of metal and paper with writing or drawing on it. I have found several lists on the ground- grocery and to do lists. They are charming self portraits.
Some of my collection came into use a few months ago when I received Matt Taggerts "String Theory" performance fluxkit, which is a kit of string and label that he asks you to combine with things you have found and then send him a photo which he enters onto his
blog. I decided to use the hands and arms that I had collected and strung them incrementally by size.
After viewing "
Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art" at the Morgan Library & Museum, I realize I created a 3d list.
The lists in the Morgan Library exhibit, of course by know people, are collections of thoughts- the usual- things bought, thing to be sold, but also a beautiful list that was a love letter by Eero Saarinen and Ray Johnson's "people who have posed for silhouettes". Philip Evergood made lists by taping new paper notes onto the bottom of the previous notes, creating visually
exquisite accumulation pieces.
I had not been to the Morgan Library & Museum for a really long time. There has been a renovation, the exhibit space is wonderful. And my visit allowed me to cross off something from my list- "museums to get to" as there are a number of good shows up right now.
