Found Objects: A Rolling Stone That Has Gathered No Moss...

This stone (literally) came to me when I was around twenty years old. I was standing outside of my parent's house, waiting for a ride I think. My parents house was the first house on the left of a very steep hill. Being in earthquake country, everyone always told us this was a very good thing. I'm not sure exactly why (less seismic activity? more solid? old wive's tale?) but apparently you are safer if "the big one" comes and you happen to be on a large hill....




Anyway, I was standing out on the driveway when all of the sudden I heard a strange sound. I looked down and saw a baseball-sized granite stone rolling down the hill only to stop inches before where I stood. To this day I still don't know where it came from. As far as I could tell no one was in sight who might have rolled it to the long-haired hippie girl on a whim (although my hometown is not exactly suburbia in the worst sense of the word, it is definitely a bedroom community where people tend to stay in their houses. Except for a few exceptions, I could have never identified any of our neighbors by sight, though they may have lived nearby for more than twenty years.) I took it as a sign, picked up the rock and it's been with me ever since. At first it sat on my piano, then on the windowsills of various Berlin apartments to where it now sits, in the pot of a small, pitiful olive tree (we so DO NOT have a mediterranean climate here!!) that I keep in the kitchen. Little rolling granite stone, you've come a long way, babe!



Do you have found object, something you were given or picked up somewhere that has a special meaning to you regardless of how seemingly meaningless it might be? If you do, I want to tell your story, so drop me a line. :)

Found Objects: The Beauty In Bones

Until a few years ago, the only person I had ever heard of who did taxidermy was Norman Bates in Psycho and, well, that's probably not the most positive example....Then one day, while wandering down Valencia Street in San Francisco on a trip to see my family, I ran across the shop Paxton Gate. Although there are a variety of oddities displayed in the shop window, Paxton Gate starts harmless enough: books, gardening tools, children's toys. But when you start to go further suddenly you notice other things, things like bones; creatures that used to creep and crawl; stuffed animals wearing clothes, only these stuffed animals were once alive. In the very back are even full animal skeletons, also dressed in clothes like this one, Sister Mary Muskrat.

"Hmm. I guess taxidermy can be quirky and fun," I thought the first time I saw this. Only it didn't really feel like fun. It felt spooky and sort of sacred, like the finger bones of a saint wrapped in faded velvet and enclosed in glass at some Spanish or Italian cathedral. This is, after all, how we will all end up....

While the folks at Paxton Gate may have seen the irreverence in bones, Ariel, who runs the shop Material Merchant, has seen the beauty in them. When I decided I wanted to do a regular series on my blog on found objects and people's stories about them, I posted something about it on the etsy forums to see if anyone there would be interested. Ariel was the first person who answered. Here is what she wrote: "When I started hiking and exploring the woods around my house I found the giant whitened ribcage of a cow. It set into motion a chain of events that eventually led to my etsy shop." Needless to say, I was intrigued. I contacted her to tell me more. The answer I got was so vivid, I decided to post it in her own words. This is her found object story:

A little over three years ago I was fifteen and adventurous. I had hiked along the golf course with my dog Punkin before, feeding horses and watching sand hills cranes when I saw them. Behind my house there was a run-down barbed wire fence beyond which strange sounds often emanated in the early morning hours; it was back there that I found it.

There were gopher holes and tortoise dens, trails from the blackberry bushes, deer prints and cacti. We hit a fence line and hiked on until the sparse trees opened up into a gray, sandy field with brown grass. There, off in the distance, was what looked like a rocky outcrop. As we got closer I saw that it was actually the giant, bleached remains of a cow. The skull was crushed nearby, and most of the larger bones had been carried off by coyotes, but it was so magnificent. In hindsight, it occurred to me it was just some dead farm animal, but it reminded me of those popular depictions of elephant graveyards or what real graveyards should look like. I didn't really want to touch them too much and there were too many of them to carry back easily, so I took off my t-shirt and loaded them in it like a sling. Within a week I was back with my taxidermist friend (to whom I owe much in the way of helping me see the beauty of the dead) and we both carried two more bundles of bones back to my house.

I don't remember what we planned to do with the bones; I just wanted them. They have been there ever since, damaging my neighbor's opinion of our household and reminding me of where we all might end up some day.

Ariel also told me she realizes that there is a stigma around animal products in general, but that people also don't really make any differentiation between, for example, a fox fur from a fur farm or a fox fur from an old hunting cabin. In her shop, she tries to foster a "found" mentality rather than a "demand" one. Thanks Ariel for sharing your truly fascinating story!

Do you have a found object story? Have you ever found anything, no matter how apparently strange or worthless that somehow had meaning to you or that inspired to you create something? If you do, then please tell me about it. :)

Found Objects: The Blue Dog

I recently saw a documentary on photography where they mentioned found objects which I found really fascinating. As I understood it, the term was first coined by the surrealists. A found object was anything a person found somewhere that inspired them to a work of art. In the wikipedia definition they also mentioned that it could be any seemingly worthless item- a penny found after the birth of your first child, a china cup you bought at a junk store in Vancouver, a rock you picked up on a beach in France that you now keep on the window sill in your kitchen- that has grown to have a special significance you can't entirely explain. I want to start doing a series on found objects here on my blog and will start tonight with one of my own: the Blue China Dog.

I found the blue China dog sometime in the late 90s when I was studying music at Mills College. At the time I both worked and studied full time (how I did that I really don't know now...the energy of youth I guess) and what little extra time I had was usually spent in bookstores or cafes. One afternoon, while I was heading towards Pegasus Books on Rockridge Avenue in Oakland, I passed by an antique store. I'm not really sure what drew me inside; although I like old things, the store mainly carried furniture which would have been out of my price range (I was pretty broke though I worked so much) and which I would have had no use for. But go inside I did, and when I did, there he was: The Blue Dog.

I'm not sure what it was that made me want him so much. Sure, he's beautifully made, with little details like a curved tail and exposed ribs, but it was more than just seeing something I liked and wanted to buy. When I saw the blue dog, I knew I had to have him. I longed to own him. But there was a problem: I had no cash.

I don't remember what the problem was exactly, whether I was waiting on a pay check or whether there just wasn't an atm nearby and they didn't take checks. All I know is I didn't have the money to buy him. The sales clerk, a middle aged man, came over and talked to me about the dog and the little Chinese woman figurine beside him. They were for sale as a pair, he told me, and were both pre-war Chinese. This you could tell because they had been merely stamped China instead of Made in China like they started doing Post World War 2. The price for them together was 20 dollars.

I told him that I wanted them (though I've never been all that attached to the other figurine, but he would only sell them together) but that I didn't have the cash. Maybe I asked him to put them aside; I can no longer remember. But I do remember very well what happened next. He said: "You look like an honest person. Why don't you just take them now and bring the money by some other time." Yes, you've probably guessed how the story ended. I took the dog and the little woman and planned to come back and pay. But I never did. Several times over the years it would hit me: "Go tomorrow and pay for the blue dog. That man trusted you." but then I would get distracted and be too busy and time just flew by. I'm going to the Bay Area to visit my family and, yes, I do plan to finally pay the twenty dollars. If I do, I'll write about it here complete with pictures. God, I feel like such a heel (and proud that I just used this old school slang. Grandma would be proud.)

Does anyone else have an interesting or funny or touching or sad found object story? I would love to post them here in my blog with pictures so, if you do, please send me an e-mail or leave a comment. :)