I am a practitioner of the can-I-have-its, a collector of things. I am the sort who walks through antique shops touching everything, wondering what place these objects could hold in my life. I flip through the ikea catalog and salivate, just a little. I am, indeed, firmly ensconced in the material culture. As a result, I have a lot of stuff, a LOT of stuff. And as an artist, it's worse, because there is always some potential use somewhere down the road for that quirky rusty, something-or-other. In the last months I have been exploring the place of the gift in our culture, and the relationship between faith and fear and abundance and scarcity. I believe that the structure of artificial scarcity is not only self-perpetuating, but in fact, self-catalyzing. What happens when we believe that there is enough? What happens when we act on that belief? So in the spirit of the gift, I am embarking upon a mission to give away the things that I do not need. It is a practice of faith, and an act of rebellion against dominant capitalist culture. Is it a little crazy? Probably. Is it going to be hard? Absolutely. But here I go.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

As the Things Actually Leave the House: Part One

Last week the peacoat and the mixer left to live with my favorite couple downstairs. I like when the homes I find for things have faces and names attached. I resisted the urge to go on and on about the sentimental value each of the objects had for me (but, of course, Tim and James, if you're reading this, I didn't really resist, did I). The sunbeam mixer belonged to my grandmother, and my mother used it all through her childhood. My mother is quite the baker. Some of my earliest and sweetest memories are of barely being tall enough to see the top of the counter and 'helping' my mother bake. We didn't have electricity at the time though, so no fifties fabulous mixer, instead the paintpeeling green-handled egg-beaters that had belonged to her grandmother. But I digress. The peacoat that I wore all through my early rebellion years, and the mixer left with Tim and James. Happily.

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