That’s not clutter; that’s future artwork. Maybe

My New Year’s resolution this year is D&D: Divest and Dance.

The idea is that if I clear some space by divesting myself of my art stuff I’ll have more room to dance. Or maybe it was: I’ll be doing a happy dance if I can get rid of some of that stuff. I don’t recall, as the resolution-making may have involved wine.

The problem is I have a lot of ideas for artwork involving accumulations of specific objects and have been collecting bits within those categories for years. Broken plastic toy bits. Corks. Buttons. Beach glass. Bone-china saucers. Vintage matchbooks. Souvenir spoons. Doilies. I wish this was the end of the list but it’s not. One-pound coffee bags. Lurid 1970s’ recipe cards. Wooden spools of thread. Mid-century ladies’ home magazines. Wooden embroidery hoops. Plaid flannel shirts. Antique photo frames. Glass tesserae. Other people’s jeans. Chandelier crystals. Banal postcards.

Lordy, lordy, look who’s hoardy.

Not coincidentally, I’ve been watching back-to-back episodes of Hoarding, which I’m just now realizing is my attempt to crack the code for letting go of anything with project potential. I’m dead-set against parting with any of it so my plan is to divest myself of the completed accumulations projects.

One piece going out this week is “Body of Work.” This art-school piece is a collage of actual mid-century magazine ads featuring wasp-waisted women in aprons, heels and curl-set hairdos, orgasmic at the sight of a new aqua-hued oven or the prospect of doing laundry. The ground is an idealized female-form torso mannequin on a “lazy susan” stand tricked out in 1950s-style lino and edging.

I wasn’t aware of French Nouveau Realisme artist Arman’s resin sculpture of a woman’s torso filled with mannequin parts (“Don’t Touch”, 1967, below) when I made my piece but I did appreciate his many Poubelles (“trash bin”) encased-object sculptures.

“Don’t Touch”, Arman, 1967

Clearly Arman did not feel the need to part with his materials that speak to our place and time in a hyper-consumptive society. Four decades after he finished his torso, a tsunami of new crap arrives with every freighter lined up off English Bay. Needless to say, accumulations remain a heavy, heady art medium.

But I’m making headway. The other day in the Sally Ann three shelves cluttered with cheap figurines (below) had my brain vibrating with ideas when the “Divest!” voice cut in, stopping me from taking anything more than a photo.