Winner, winner, one sea pod!

Are artists collectors or are we simply glorified packrats? As an artist I’ve collected enough “stuff” to keep me occupied even long after they put me in the home! I’ve amassed piles of reference materials and all the different medium that’s necessary to create everything imaginable. Paper, oil paints, watercolors, ink, pencils, charcoal, clay, papier mache, etc., you name it and most likely I have it.

Have you noticed that quite a few stores have gone out of business in the past decade or so? I’ve, in most cases, let the packrat in me override the sensible part of my brain when I go to check out what’s left on the shelf at those wonderful rock bottom prices. Its almost as if a tiny voice in my brain cries out in the midst of a sale "LOOK, LOOK, LOOK", “You never know when you may need this!!”, and “BUY, BUY, BUY!!” Albeit some things are necessary, like tee shirts and underwear, but there was the time I went to one of these closeouts and bought, bag after bag after bag of silk flowers, I wondered if I had a problem. But in my defense, it was too good a deal to pass up, items were marked down to 95% off, and I only ended up spending $100.00!

There was another chain that closed shortly after that which carried a side line of artist supplies along with their seasonal inventory. They had everything you needed to do any craft devised by the human mind. When they went out of business I made daily trips to the store on my lunch hour and bought massive quantities of water colors, pads of paper, beads, jewelry findings, skeins of yarn, embroidery floss, piles of felt, and the wax, dyes and stylus to create those beautiful Ukrainian Easter eggs. The savings were phenomenal, but I was so embarrassed by the amount of things I’d bought that after the third trip I left all of the “finds” in the trunk of my car (some of them stayed hidden there for over a year), besides, my room is to the point that it can’t handle one more bag of anything, it‘s ready to implode.

Sigh, what fond memories of these final sales. And as I think back it was at one of these shopping episodes that my sister and I started a friendly competition. It very simply boiled down to whoever spent the most money won. Now keep in mind that she and I are really frugal, so we never really spent a lot of money, but regardless of the small amount expended invariably, for some odd reason, I always seemed to win!

I thought about this a few Saturdays ago when I went to a ceramic supply store with my brother and our friend. We had a great time! I bought little odds and ends, ribs, texturing tools, sponges, a rasp, ribbon tools, trimming tools, a dozen bottles of underglazes and 50 pounds of a low fire porcelain. Now because the place was only open to the public one Saturday a month, they gave everyone a 10% discount. I was in my glory so to speak, because all of the items were discounted between 10 and 50 percent, nothing was full price. It was a heady experience, until much to my dismay I paid the gal and realized that the $170 I’d spent only amounted to half a plastic grocery bag of stuff and a 50 pound box of mud. I screwed my face up into an inane smile, looked at my brother and said, “I win”. Well of course he laughed, and then thankfully he took me to a terrific Indian restaurant afterwards to assuage my sorrows. Ah, the nan and that hot cauliflower dish, to die for!! But that’s another post altogether.

Although I felt like I’d lost at the checkout counter on Saturday, during the following Thursday pottery session the tools I’d gotten turned out to be fabulous and I realized I had won. Once again I’d sculpted something very organic, but this time it had a textile quality about it. Proudly I twirled it on the banding wheel. The teacher loved it and I was very pleased indeed! It was definitely sci-fi, and worthy of being considered a sibling to the Audrey sculpture I’d made the week before, but sadly my brother once again put everything into perspective and compared my masterpiece to Sponge Bob squarepant’s pineapple. Then much to my dismay he heartily sang the accompanying tune. Sigh, $170 to make a pineapple from under the sea! Oh well, I can’t wait to hear what he likens the next creation of mine to. I must say he does have a creative mind, which of course dictates that he’s a packrat too, so he’s not all bad and that’s probably why I love him as much as I do.

And so in deference to everything subsea that inspires us and to my beloved brother we all break into chorus, "We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine...!" LOL!

CD