The Exchange Project

I have begun to incorporate more garbage into the sketchbooks, looking for ways to recycle and reflect my community. Creating instant ephemera from things that are already lost, thrown away destroyed... until I salvage the object and reset in in another form that is also ephemera. The book I made last semester from the garbage on my street was part of a psycho-geographic mapping of my street. This project reflects street garbage from the parking lots at school and also the walks around the capital mall in DC. The things I seem attracted to are worn by time and weather, past their original intent and at the edge of being recognizable. The tags, food containers are processed by being run over, stepped on, scraped and torn.

I have asked several people to participate. Sometimes the burden of expected creativity can create a pressure, a gulf or gap in a relationship. Simple lack of time and energy can quickly become some unspoken obligation. So many times a person will hand a book back saying, I really didn't have time to work on this, and then hand me something luminous. So, I have asked some people to record their feelings around handling the books and entering the process. So, we'll see, maybe that will create more pressure!