Ok, not that exactly. I am thinking about how everyday objects are precious in reality, but we have all been trained not to see them that way. Once upon a time, a bottle was as precious as the milk inside it, a dress was as precious as the paper and box it came in to keep it safe. We kept everything. Just everything. Every spare nail or screw, even, because it meant one less task to do or money to spend.
Somewhere along the way, saving things for reuse was conflated with hoarding, disorganization, being cheap/stingy, and that is a shame. We have fully lost our wonder at the miracle of everyday objects. I got into the mindset at the thrift store yesterday, as I looked at the enormous store and all it had to offer. There were tools that revolutionized a farmer’s workday a hundred years ago next to an impossibly tall pile of slender LED worklights. There were the dumbest kitchen towels I have ever seen in my life, next to a staggering pile of stir fry pans/woks. A pressure cooker that looked like it would almost certainly decorate your ceiling for you – with soup.
We take all of this wonder for granted because we’re supposed to move on to the next thing we want/need. We have been trained on a daily basis that we are here to acquire, not to rest, not to reuse, and definitely not to recycle.
One of the things I think about when making one of my pieces is that it has to be precious, far more precious than the thrift store item it began its life as. Otherwise there is no point. I am by no means trying to get wealthy off this art, and couldn’t anyway, but I want the price to make you stop and think – is it really that important to me? Does it capture something that is so unique that I need to pay this price for it? Every single item is one of a kind – there will never be another one, ever. And I rejoice a little, in thinking that a monster and a human have formed a bond, and that the bond is durable, and that monster won’t end up at the thrift store because someone really came to love it.
I have been reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren via audiobook, and if you haven’t heard her read her work, get it. Your library should have it, so it won’t cost you anything. But it will bring some wonder back into how you look at the world.
Back to my original point though. I found a lot of good things at the thrift store. Things so I can make my sales table displays taller and more interesting, things to help transport my art to shows, and things that are so silly, so ugly, so broken, that I can’t leave them behind. They have a kernel of greatness in them. Somewhere, way deep in there, they were made by human hands. And if we discount the day to day work that humans hands do, what do we have left?
Updated: I have posted on Patreon about frothing at the mouth with excitement over my latest find, a tavern sign. đ
