Why sculptors are called packrats

(Found objects for a project, for inspiration, for decoration)

We save stuff
In my cranium,
it says,
“I
Can
Use
That!”

Sculptor finds a
driveway to safely
turn around in
then she gets out
and picks up the
item from the curb.

Your trash is
my free material.
No, I wasn’t going
to call it a treasure
because treasure
implies that there
isn’t another one
like it in the world.

What I know is that
t-shirts are a
dime a dozen
at the end of the
semester when you
work at a college cleaning
dorm rooms for a summer.
Rags can be $30-40 for a
box of cotton fabric pieces.
Seriously!

College students can be wasteful
and their landlords sometimes
hate them as well
when they have to
clean up after them.

I found a suitcase
on the side of
the road filled
with mismatched clothing
and items
(a silver plated inscribed
felt lined box from
an overzealous paramour.)

It now holds my tooth picks
and girly drink umbrellas.
Toothpicks are a
sculptor’s best friend
They are scribes, mixers,
picks, pins
and in a pinch a match,
or kindling

My brain is just slightly
on the half full side of
creativity and poverty
helps with that. Why buy
something that someone
is just going to send
to a land fill?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful
to have a landfill that had
an art wall built around it.

Yeah, that would take a
grant and more energy
than I have. So, please
somebody steal my idea
and salvage some metal
from the landfill and build
a beautiful piece of work.

And just for fun,
let’s not go
through the state
committees that only
select artists with
public work in place-
that makes it a closed
monopoly, there are so
many sculptors out there
dying to get a chance
to make their mark.

The work that I have been
making for years now
are metal flowers.

That doesn’t mean I can’t make
a dang fence. Art committees
are not always the most
creative folk I’ve ever met.

Art is not always a circle
of children playing
or a man on a horse with a rifle
or the most recent dead sports hero.

Art can be bold, subtle and
beautiful, an eyesore to some
or a temporary installation
that can be purchased
by a museum

There,
I have just laid out a plan to become
a moderately successful artist.

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