Junk, Trash & Sentiment

Before

I realize that the artist in me is kind of a hoarder.

But I am trying to get it together for 2012. I have a lot of plans but in order for them to come off, I need to reduce the clutter in my life...starting with a closet I know. I have a lot of art stuff and my current house is smaller than my last so I need to be smarter about how things are arranged. So here (left-top) is a before picture of today's adventure....

I realize I can't be sentimental about the stuff or I won't get anything done. From the picture you may wonder what's there to be sentimental about but there was a lot of little treasures hidden in that clutter...believe me.

Do you know that there is a subtle difference between trash and junk? "Trash" is obvious garbage. But "junk" can sometimes be reused if fixed up and polished right...I suspect this is the inconvenient truth that every would be hoarder starts with....and it just get out of control when they are left on their own.

My beloved, Hewlett Packard 48G
Scientific Calculator
 I used back in college.
(early 90's)

I have a thing regarding mechanical and/or electronic objects...the heavier the better.  I was reminded of this quirk when while "cleaning" I came across a bunch of  broken yet once very useful things.  Treasures like my old framer point driver, an old faithful Olympus camera,  my Hewlett Packard 48G scientific calculator...(this thing got me an A in Linear Algebra!)... I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. I tried...Really. But they had each served me so well when they worked. In honor of our history together, I found them a very nice spot on my  newly organized shelf... I told myself that I would one day soon take them apart and fix them.. or use them in a still life painting or make a robot with them....Yep!


I think I need a junk box...so I can store things that are not technically trash but not useful beyond some sentiment at the given moment... I wonder if that's how Fred Sanford started out....

After 

Anyway, it took just about all day with working around my kids schedule and struggling with sentimentality. But I finally got a big portion of the closet done. Mostly, I removed my art materials that were cluttering the place. I think now that I have moved into a bigger studio, I can clear out the spaces here at home that I had been using to store my art stuff.

When I started out cleaning, I actually didn't expect that I would do that. But recently, I have been sensing that my family may feel like my art practice encroaches on too much of our house...

The nerve of them ....really! 


Time will tell if some of it sneaks back in.... a mat board here, a piece of wood there...