Getting ready for our move to a much smaller home in Toronto, our family is purging a whole mess of excess baggage we’ve been carting around for too long. Some of its easy to unload (really, did I need those forgettable grad caps and tassels?) but other treasures are hard to part with. For instance, there’s been a stash of memorabilia my faithful mother had kept all these years and passed on to me – report cards, school projects and art work dating back all the way to kindergarten.
What to do with all this stuff so carefully kept for me? We just don’t have the space for kindergarten archives (I’m becoming ruthlessly unsentimental about our stuff). Well, thank you, digital camera and the idea of a mini-archive right here and now.
So graze your way through the hors d’oevres table, enjoy a glass of wine and welcome to the first exhibition of my early work. It’s being described as “ironically playful, primitive yet with clean simplicity in composition, a fusion of impressionism ethos and cubist sensibilities, an exhibition that visually and conceptually engages the didactic discourse at the heart of play.”
Or maybe stash of stuff a thoughtful and proud mom keeps around for her kid to have a sense of himself.
Squinch 
Since my wife is an Art History major, I feel strangely qualified to offer some thoughtful analysis and/or interpretation on a couple of the works: Exhibit #5: Is the artist offering a prediction of the year in which his hometown team will next win the Cup? Exhibit #6: Does Icarus seem to flying with Frisian feathers? Well preserved items, Phil, and worth taking to your next home. Blessings on the move!
didn’t even notice the Frisian colours Jim – wow, didn’t know these works of art had such depth to them!
Phil, these items are an Expressive Artists dream material. Please do not toss out. There are ways to preserve this material with limited space. Great material for Visual Journalling. Remember Gilead.
Jenny – if you want them, got to claim them asap. No room in the new place. It’s part of my new spiritual discipline – purging. I’ve got a digital record!
I did say I wanted them but I think I spoke in haste. I am having even difficulty purging my own stuff let alone taking on others.Good Luck with further purging.
I just cringe at the idea of that early artwork, etc, being tossed. Sure, a digital record is better than nothing, but the actual paper and crayons, etc… And they take so little room!!! OK, ok, I know you have thought about this–so I won’t say anymore. I think it was my mother who, years ago, threw all my grade-school work away–and there was no way to make digital records in those days ;-(
I want them. I am in the process of making a photo record of my stuff as well. The past two years have been a process of purging. Working my way through my stuff, still working on my journals.Most of my stuff has been shared with others or thrift stores but the journals need something momentous as a purge. I am thinking of fire.
Love it…the theme of exhibit #3 … may show early influences of the Calvinist notion and emphasis on the necessity for hard work and discipline as a component of a person’s calling and worldly success and visible sign or result of personal salvation… 🙂 🙂 I really want to know who the the guy with the big biceps is at the 6 o’clock dinner table?
So observant of my life’s influences, cindy. the guy with the biceps had to be some grand self-delusion or some idealized picture of my dad.