I really enjoy the idea of ‘found’ objects.
Entire magazines are dedicated to people gathering found bits of paper, notes, pictures, and trinkets lost by the owner. An object, discarded or not, at one point had some sort of connection with a specific person, in a very specific time which is now completely lost. That is extremely powerful. A tree was transformed into paper, the paper was purchased, somewhere, a human took hold of it, gave it a couple markings from an indiscernible tongue, then poof…the cycle stops. Whether lost or tossed, our the paper still holds its value, trapped between the curb and the sidewalk.
I would spend hours and hours of class time, daydreaming about the person who wrote all over my textbook, carved in my desk, and discarded their gum wrapper on the floor. Just markings of time passing in someone else’s life lying on the floor.
So this whole thought process I came up with at 330 in the morning a couple nights ago kinda meandered through how much I hate our disposable culture, we don’t cherish anything, etc. But I’ll weed my thoughts down a little.
In the end, when I think of lost objects, I think that at some point, they will be found. The sculpture I’m thinking about would be precious boxes for things, like a velvet lined box with the perfect indensions for a knife, a hammer, a pencil…but the objects wouldn’t be there. Empty, with these quiet indensions waiting for both the object to be lost and found. Perhaps the piece lies in creating a suto shrine for somewhat precious things, a place for everything to prevent lose and place to find things when they’re gone. I could find objects in weird places (I saw a picture once of a live starfish on a sofa or more practical from anotther picture I saw of a really nice watch found in the middle of a rock climbing route) then make a box for the recently found object and leave it there…or just place these boxes all over different enviornments. Taking some time to consider these ideas further...