This is what I found on the street today. I call it 'Urban Foraging'. Some of the items I found while biking to and from my son's school. That's why I like biking; it's up close and personal with the trash on the street! Everything is so much more accessible. But walking is really the best way to experience the environment. Things come into a sharper focus when you are in direct contact with the landscape. What might have been just a blur in a car or a sparkling spec from a bike is actually a crunched bottle cap with an intriguing graphic. It's easy to miss it, most people do. These things do not have the same appeal to others, but they inspire me. I actually get excited when I find a crushed piece of metal on the side of the road! I don't even know what I'm going to do with it yet but I know that I want to work with it. Cheap thrills! I'm even lucky enough to have a few friends who have started picking up garbage for me, (much to my husband's chagrin!). I think it's fun to motivate people to see things in a new way, to see the beauty in a mangled piece of metal in the gutter. I have a secret fantasy of stocking my studio with all of my collected odds and ends and recycled doodads -to create my own personal 'Scrap' store. It makes sense to collect it myself rather than buy it don't you think? My husband's not a collector. He says "buy it when you need it". I don't work that way. I need it first, then I will figure out what to do with it.There is a certain intersection on my way to the grocery store where I have been noticing what seems to be the debris from a car crash that must have happened there a few weeks ago. Today, I finally pulled the car over to get a closer look. I couldn't resist any longer, the thought of finding some good pieces was too tantilizing! It felt a little creepy to be exploring the scene of an accident, but I did score a few dinged up 'auto remains'.
Now if only I knew how to weld!
