I’ve spent the last two weeks wrapping all my worldly goods Christo-style, packing them into cardboard boxes, and then placing them as Jenga blocks into a larger box (storage container) sitting on the driveway. Boxes within boxes. It’s all very meta.
Mr C told me that packing objects per material type was not the most efficient way to pack our home. Apparently, we have to pack room by room - “It’s just logical.” Normally, I would stand my ground when it comes to matters of taxonomy but I’d noticed his rising stress levels so I hid the box marked “Wooden Things” and set about wrapping up my studio.
Let me say that handling every single piece of art, every art material, every paintbrush, old frame and paint-encrusted jar has been exhausting! Not only exhausting but horrifying at times; illuminating and definitely transformative. The whole wrapping process became a measure of value: Is this object worth enough to me that I want to spend my time enveloping it in brown paper and wedging it into a box?
By far the trickiest belongings to deal with in the studio - as in the house - were those items that were unwanted but difficult to pass on. I have a habit of taking the glass out of frames (I don’t always like my paintings under glass) and where I live sheet glass cannot be recycled, it goes straight to landfill. Unhappy with my local waste management company’s inability to recycle my growing stack of glass panes, I’d been storing it for a number of years and now had the job of breaking it and wrapping (again!) the shards so they could be placed in my weekly trash collection. Fun! Similarly, dried-up and empty oil paint tubes, empty aerosol cans of fixative and varnish, cannot be recycled nor thrown in the trash/rubbish bin; they are classified as hazardous waste and have to be taken to a special facility some thirty minutes drive away. They are moving with me :) As are the many little orange medicine containers I’ve been collecting since they also cannot be recycled and I’ve spent too much time cleaning off the super sticky labels to throw them away.
So, I’m moving everything that’s valuable to me plus all the crap that’s too difficult to get rid of! Haha, isn’t that a great metaphor for life? Moving forward with everything precious along with all the stuff I can’t deal with (eye roll). My therapist daughter might have something to say about that.
Anyhoo, as I am wont to do, I turned packing the house into an opportunity to research artists who wrap. I’ll leave you with some of my fav works and a promise to explore unwrapping in the near future ;)
May you move forward with everything that’s precious to you and find ways of discarding all the rubbish you don’t need!
Until next time.
JC
Love this little video of Judith Scott at work:
Find a short intro to Man Ray’s work HERE
Website of Christo and Jeanne Claude:
I’m a little obsessed with the art of wrapping:
Packing and moving will test any relationship, I swear. lol I also pack by "room" because I usually have the movers move those boxes to the appropriate area so we're not having to drag them around.
Love the highlight of artists that "wrap"! I guess the next question I have: Is packing, then, a form of art? :D