Kristin Peterson: mixed media, collage, painter, artist

Thursday, April 28, 2016

what is garbage?


our son needed pics for a project. the easiest pics to get to sometimes are ones that hang out in my studio and are very old. we made copies of several vintage photos and when i checked on him later he had laid the cut out papers on the table and i knew instantly i needed to keep these papers.

my son's plan of course when he was all finished was to throw the papers away- but, i quickly said, leave all of those for me. my son thought i was crazy, but does understand that his mom is an artist and creatively special; and left them quietly on the table.

don't you sometimes see things and know that you have to keep them so you can make something with them?......part of the charm for me with these, was the cut from the top of the page, and the sharp edges cut without any concern for the rest of the picture. not quite child-like, but, clearly snips of abandonment to retrieve only what is needed.

happy thursday.

4 comments:

  1. Yes and yes and my father in law ummmm.... Has social and etiquette awareness issues and just randomly tossed ( I say trashed)many lovingly, painstakingly, hand dyed ribbons, coffee filters for flowers ( ombré too) vintage organist sheet music of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers ( had their handwritten notes in it :( :(.... ) this actually happened yesterday so it's funny I came across this today. I was physically ill from it. Broken heart? Yep! I was working on mixed media pieces that incorporated those pages, pics of them and needlepoint / tatting that was passed to me... And I'm telling you I started screaming when HE threw out the paste / vintage jewelry, necklaces, earrings etc I was going to use... A gallon tote of vintage odds and ends. Some broke or a missing earring but ALL my grammas and great grammas.. And broke or not I was repurposing it for mixed media etc. I WAS working on about 15 of these projects for Christmas gifts for the family as a memorial for my gramma. No way to salvage it because our 1890's house is being restored and guess what? Yes! A construction dumpster... My father in law threw it in there. It rained, had chemicals spilled on it, you better believe this fat girl crawled in that 30 yard dumpster, wailing, crying so hard I was throwing up, well that and I was physically sick from what I saw... My husband had to pull me out ( I'm sick, auto immune, blood illness) and on chemo pills, ( not the hard stuff to be clear) but I have NO immune system...because I was so out of it I didn't even notice I was bleeding from broken glass, had a couple rusty nails in me, basic construction debris... It took three men to pull me out of that dumpster and I weigh 125 and all of 5'3 on a tall day! But yeah, that's my trashy story. I'm shaking as I'm
    Writing this. Thanks for the outlet to vent!

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    1. Hi Jessica! omg....i would have been in the dumpster with you!! i almost felt sick for you reading your comment. so glad you found this post. truly most of the papers and things i enjoy other people probably consider garbage. i am glad you had an outlet for what happened and hope you were maybe able to salvage some of the things. XO- kristin

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    2. Thank you Kristin! Funny how I found your post just hours after that happened and truly just st because I was trying to calm down by looking at pretty things such as mixed media, as if I was mysteriously guided to you! Reading your post helped me in a few ways but the fact I could comment to you and you'd GET me helped me to know I'm not alone when it comes to not liking people touching what THEY see as trash or garbage. Basically after that happened I was told by my father in law, whom I love and respect very much but now I'm seeing a different side of him. I believe he had Aspergers or a form of it? He did not apologize even though my husband made it clear to him he was NOT to make decisions as to what was/ is garbage in his eyes. He wants to help and he thinks by doing that he was helping me. Ughhh ummm no he emotional shut me down. The fact he took stuff from my craft room and said hey, this looks like trash... Then dumped it... Honestly I think he put stuff over it in the dumpster so 1) I wouldn't see it but 2) if I
      Did, I wouldn't be able to salvage it. He did good by that because I wasn't able to get but one thing. It was an old cookbook of my great grandmother's passed to my gramma then to me, again, it was all handwritten by them and even had recipes from my great great grandmother too! It had pictures in it as well. My great grandmother was THE first woman to own a BAR/ restaurant in Kansas! It was unheard of a woman to run and solely own an establishment of that nature. So the pictures were of her, the bar, my gramma as a little girl helping in the kitchen. The recipebook was started as recipes she used at the bar! So that was recovered as it was the old old leather bound journals actually bound with leather strips laced to hold everything together but it was already well loved and worn but I got it out and a few pics are missing and the cover fell off. But I got something back. I wasn't able to recover anything else though.
      Because I made such a "spectacle" of myself
      ( that's what FIL said) I'm a hoarder now lmfao because I keep paper trash around lmfao. I kindly told him what it was, how I got it ( my gramma passed last year) and why does it matter to him
      What I keep in my own home. Still no apologies, no empathy, no feelings as to what he did. He doesn't see he did anything wrong. As a matter of fact, he said he doesn't understand emotional attachment to "things" that he's not emotionally attached to junk so he thinks I'm a hoader because he doesn't understand what it means to want to keep something your great grandmother made that's lasted 75 years. people with emotional attachments are just hoarders...it's an excuse we use to keep things we don't need. He said that to me.
      I wonder if he'd like it if I went to his house and started trashing his stuff I think is crap...
      Now his house is a disgrace, disgusting, filthiest place I've even seen so I'm not even allowed over there because my husband is afraid I'll die from breathing mold and dust / dirt...littered with empty huge bottles of jack Daniels he.... Get ready... HOARDS lmfao. I'm not kidding, he hides them ( I should say tries to hide them) behind his chair where he tosses them but the bottles are overflowing and fill the entire house. All because he won't recycle them as he doesn't want the neighborhood to see 300 empty economy sized Jack Daniels bottles lol! Sooo who is the hoarder? Lol thanks again for letting me vent.. It was nice to get this toxicity out of me. Thanks for listening and your nice comment. I assure you that there's going to be more to come but at least I found a safe place to get it out of me where he won't see and to someone who gets me! You're the best! Xoxo, Jess
      P.s please pray I don't throw HIM into the dumpster haha

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    3. Thank you again Jessica! i am glad you found this post and had somewhere to vent- always good to get something off of your chest especially in a safe spot. hang in there and feel free to always stop back! Xo-kristin

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thanks for your comments- i love hearing from you!!