Friday, September 18, 2009

Everything/Nothing...really matters


As you can see this cup is ridiculous. Favorite cup!? How ironic. This cup means nothing to me and I think that may be why I like it so much. Like a bad song that plays on the radio that gets stuck in your head. You are annoyed as you find yourself humming it and before you know it you need to hear it one more time and then you buy the album. You know the score. In this day of modern mass production and too much advertising and hype anything of no quality or history whatsoever can become a cherished object. I think I may be going through another existential crisis or something cause I seem to be fed up with objects. What's the point anymore of working your ass off to make a very special cup...to sacrifice everything just so you can bring things into this world to counter-balance the senseless meaningless mass production of junk that you see all around you...but then one day you are thirsty and you find this stupid cup at a yard sale and you still somehow manage to find a way to make it matter. It does the job and it does it way better than any of the cups in your fancy famous potters' cup collection (stored away in your storage space full of way too many objects that you think are important to hold on to somehow). Everything is a reaction to a reaction to a reaction and you find that you've dug yourself in to a contradictory grave.
You see I was raised an anti-materialist...but I come from a long lineage of cosmic junk collectors. Call it intuition, what have you, but I can pick up an object and be transported to times and places or the people that once cherished them. Every object has a story or a sentiment. Every object holds power...a memory. Objects oftentimes outlast the people they belonged to. A diary...handpicked for display as part of what defines you...your aesthetics and tastes. It is all the more powerful if you hand make these objects yourself. To be an object maker what better way to leave your mark on this world.
It's with this attitude that I took it upon myself to gather and make many, many objects....screw the freedom that comes with a free floating transcendental way of life... Let there be things, many many things! Security! But then one day you wake up and drink from an ugly mass produced cup that means nothing to you and you feel so free. The world has become a transitory, meaningless and absurd place...why shouldn't the objects in it reflect this?

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