Showing posts with label found objects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label found objects. Show all posts

Friday, May 18, 2007

this morning's catch


I picked up a couple of more pounds of junk from the back yard. Usually I have to dig down an inch or so, but all the rain we've been getting lately seems to bring stuff right up to the surface. Maybe it's washing away the dirt I already loosened. Anyway, this is typical of what I pick up when I'm puttering around out there. Usually it's rusty nails, broken glass, and bits of old roof shingles.

This morning I found some pieces of broken pottery, including one with a scalloped surface and one with some nice blue edging. Also two plastic beads, a plastic flower-shaped bead, a pearl-like round thing, a piece of glass with an "R" showing, and a heavy rusted metal plate about 5x5 inches. I think the elongated green and blue things are plastic pieces from some kind of game or maybe from old Christmas lights? I'm keeping most of this stuff now in order to possibly incorporate it into some kind of future art. I've been getting inspired by some of the recycled junk turned into art around the neighborhood.

Originally I hoped to find historically significant items, but I think it's mostly what was left of an old tool shed that was torn down. The historical preservation officer told me to try to find evidence of our house's original color (it's now white) so I'm hopeful I'll find something with original paint on it. We've found evidence of green or turquoise paint on the old cypress fence and red and green paint in places on a door. Today I found two pieces of some strange material with green and turquoise paint on it. I don't know what the material is yet. Maybe it's wood and maybe it's some kind of plaster or stucco. I found a piece of caulking with evidence of red paint and it also had newspaper print embedded in or transferred to it.

No cans of money yet.

Monday, April 09, 2007

muffle my brain

I picked up this car muffler yesterday. It had been lying in the median across near the old McKinney Dairy Queen for a couple of weeks. I spotted it one day in my rearview mirror and almost couldn't believe my eyes. I had just been telling a friend about an art installation I saw once in which someone aligned several hundred of these things in a grid on a grassy quad. I've never forgotten what a great piece it was. I walked amongst those heaps of metal, all different, in wonder at the imagination that created the display.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this but I'm sure I'll eventually think of something. In the meantime I'll let it Rust In Peace.