five pieces, and what they reveal: another fifth one

Repetition occurs with collecting.
Games of hunting for similar objects in widely disparate environments
repeat behaviors. I have a collection of aluminum kitchen objects
that will become part of a playful installation about recycling.
I collect a different type of dish for a friend who remembers
her grandmother’s kitchen with those dishes.
This play encourages reminiscing and it enhances a quality of the objects.
It adds a light magical thinking. The dishes carry
the goodness of grandmother’s care. I also have collections of artist business cards from various locations and studio tours.
These are the ephemera
of our daily
lives.


We often repeat general themes in play. We draw these themes from surprise occurrences. Some event in our lives sneaks up on us and we play our way through it. I sometimes wonder if my lapses in memory have lead to annotating objects with text to help keep the time sequence from getting jumbled. Once we sustain the initial surprise, we can reenact the event through play. It tickles us when we see a child mimic an adult either because of the uncanny accuracy of the reenactment or because of some unexpected distortion that has been introduced.

Repetition Exercise #6: Familiarizing

Find some familiar object, noticed in daily activity with some frequency. Over the next 3-6 weeks, make a collection of them. Consider each a reward either in itself or in terms of something else, with which we wrestle. Consider aluminum bottle tabs, old yellow pencils, or bottle caps. What objects do we notice along roadsides? Different objects draw our attention. This serves as a subtle reminder that we see the environment differently. Some of us notice fan belts, rope, or tire tread. Some of us notice shoes hung on telephone lines. Choose a small enough object, preferably something already noticed for a time, that we can transport easily. Create a container for the objects and let it fill. Or bind them in some other fashion together. Box or wrap them; mark or label them in some fashion to complete the collection. The label hopefully reminds us of the role of repetition and subtle transformation as we play. It will be a talisman of playful living.



I collect bottle caps.
(Well truthfully, I collect them all, pennies bottle caps pencils ropes, aluminum pull tabs, cards. You never know when…. Well, no, I only do it when I get a little disenchanted and need to add a little whimsy to my diet, or quirkiness to my step.)

I intend to use the bottle caps to make a snake. I eventually invent a tool to put a nail hole in each one of a hundred. After a series of repetitions, I assemble them on a wire to form the snake. I copy the idea from a Mexican folk artist; though I make my snake’s head and tail out of crushed lead wine bottle seals.