This Week in the Mercury
Monday, November 17, 2008
Artsy Picking Art Scabs
Posted by Scrappers on Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:05 AM
(Let's give a warm Blogtown welcome to local artist Justin "Scrappers" Morrison, who will be contributing coverage of visual arts and design.)
Art collections hung in Victorian shared homes and bungalow punk-houses throughout Portland might reflect more of who we are as a culture then the art you'll find in snooty-tooty galleries. These home art collections are piles of self-reflection raked together just waiting to be analyzed.
Next time you're lying on the couch nursing a hangover, try picking at the scabs in your home collection: thrift-store art. Come on, you know it's hanging above your toilet or stove. The ironic Jesus portrait, the big-eyed poodle, the gold-framed family photos of strangers with big glasses, the varnished unicorn poster dancing on a plywood foundation and the kitten hanging by its tiny claw who begs of you to please "hang in there." What does this art say about us as a people?
Call us cheap, ironic, or too lazy to send this stuff back to where it came from--regardless, thrift store art is a mirror, and when you take the time to look into that mirror you reach some retarded conclusions about yourself. For example, the classic "Footprints in the Sand" not only says that you like long walks on the beach--it says dead people walk with you wherever you go. Pretty deep, eh? Another classic, the paint by number of the sad hobo clown, says that you like fun and freedom, but for some transcendental reason it makes you sad. Thrift store art is a lot like family: it says embarrassingly true things about you and there's no escaping it.
It's nothing new to take a look beyond the surface of thrift store art. A while back Portland's own Wurst Gallery hosted a show all about the topic. Each artist was asked to find a framed piece of artwork at their local thrift store and manipulate it into a piece of their own. The results were pretty awesome, considering the artists were collaborating with art that was one step from the trashcan.
Face it, the art you hang around your home says more about who you are then most of the abstract and expensive art you'll strain to understand in a gallery. So consider this a call to action. Make a trip to a thrift store and invest in your personal art collection.
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