After the pandemic times, this is the biggest thing that's happened to me (that is positive) in a long time. My art isn't about anything deep or important, unless you think rolling your eyes in pleasure or feeling the subtle shift from feeling like you're just alive to feeling like you are full of life isn't important. I am so lucky that I'm a person who can get excited about literal trash on the street. People make fun of that plastic bag scene*
from American Beauty but guess what-- plastic bags ARE kind of beautiful blowing around. Yes, they are trash. Yes, they will be stuck in a tree- but at that exact moment they fill with air and look like they are billowing of their own will, it is pleasant. There is a podcast I enjoy called Everything is Alive, where the host interviews a different inanimate object every week. You get to hear about their experiences, as they give you a view of life with the limitation of immobility and treatment at the hands of humans. The first episode is with a soda can, and let me tell you I SCREAMED at the end. When I was little (before kindergarten) I had imaginary friends and would also grant humanity to just about every non-living object around me. We make all these things, some we need and some that we absolutely don't, but once they exist it would be wasteful not to be thankful and appreciate them as pieces of matter that are now in our world. Do I think there is too much? Oh heck yeah. But like the Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, CA or the collections of Lego Lost At Sea, we can derive enjoyment from our imperfect behavior and creations. We've made a big mess, and hopefully it's possible to change and clean it up, but in the interim, to stave off hopelessness, look at that puddle or pile and appreciate how it has changed what was once to what is now.
Rag Soup & Sugar Sandwiches opens tomorrow at 2pm-5pm at The Arsenal in Japantown. Come say hi. And follow me on insta at @artwormsbrown.
*Come on, that character was a teen. TEENS FEEL THINGS and it is beautiful. Let's all forget that Kevin Spacey was in that movie and just remember Annette Bening just acting the hell out of each scene with her roses.
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