I read the following blog post from the blog of textile artist Mirka Knaster http://exploringtheheartofit.weebly.com/blog/artists-as-hoarders and immediately felt like I’d met some long lost distant relatives.Of course not all people who create also hoard. But I do. I seem to have inherited this need to save things from my dads side of the family.
I have been an avid collector of kitsch and rejected objects for most of my life. I have a friend who gives me hideous gifts knowing I won’t be in the least bit offended but delighted. But in recent months I’ve started to look at all this stuff and just think ” what the hell am I going to do with all this stuff?” Maybe my daughter will want to take it away in years to come. She is the one who will have to deal with it when I’m old and infirm. A mild panic sometimes descends as I shuffle my stuff about. Rearranging it and making strange combinations of chicken ornaments and Indonesian shadow puppets. I’m just wondering what’s actually going on here.
Last year my dad died. This year my daughter is leaving home to go to university. Is this unease just symptomatic of the upheaval of the current stage of my life? From September, the third phase of my life will begin, the one where I don’t have to be an active mother figure everyday. I’ll have all the time in the world to myself. Am I just freaking out a little here in anticipation of something that I know is going to happen?
So, what shall I do? Well, I feel that I want and need to try to do something creative with some of my objects instead of gazing lovingly at them. Should I start with the ones I least like or go for the jugular and pile in to the things that feel precious to me. Because they are just objects. They’re not valuable. Many have been bought for the fun of it, and as I write this I can feel the insignificance of them. Until I take my cup of tea into my shed and gaze lovingly once again upon that monkey holding a banana ornament that somebody somewhere thought wonderful enough to buy as a souvenir from Gibraltar.
