Mirka Knaster
2/8/2017
As an artist, you’re bound to collect stuff. After all, how can you create art without lots of paint, paper, canvas, clay, stone, metal, fabric, thread, and yarn? But how much stuff? Has your textile stash migrated into every part of the house because one closet won’t hold it all? Is your garage so packed with recycled materials for assemblage that you can’t park your car in there? Do you have any space left for yet another bin of plastic pieces in the barn?
If you’re already wondering whether you’re a hoarder, rest assured that I won’t be visiting to check. Instead, here’s another definition of hoarding to consider–collecting for repurposing. Now, doesn’t that sound better?
An obsessive collector, Clare Graham doesn’t give any of this a second thought. His stuff–a staggering amount of dominoes, buttons, ropes, wires, pop tops, scrabble tiles, yardsticks, swizzle sticks, bottle caps, soda cans, tin cans, and other disposable items–is piled in a 7,000-square-foot warehouse, MorYork, in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He started his “habit” in Canada, when only eight years old, using the dozens of drawers in a roll top desk to catalog and organize such found items as crystals, rocks, and animal bones. As an adult, Graham often waits years to accumulate just the right size, texture, and quantity of objects before piercing, stringing, collaging, and bundling them into his unique sculptures. I saw a room loaded with them at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles in October 2014. Incredible recycling!
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Louise Bourgeois, born in France in 1911, saved nearly every item of clothing she wore. She also accumulated everything else–from wood and plaster, to latex, marble, bronze, and glass–to create her artwork. …
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