With a looming departure, I finally gathered a turbo-charged motivation to create as many pieces of assemblage art as I could before leaving. One part fulfilling a personal goal, one part decluttering. Nothing like a deadline to get things done.
This body of work culminated in a personal, necessary and cathartic Halloween art burn at my friends’ June and Rich’s farm. It was a Burning Man style burn. A ceremonial and emotional release as my attention changed from the past to the future. No turning back.
As Americans we tend to own a huge footprint of possessions and I am guilty as charged. For a decade and a half, I had a series of creative spaces full of materials and belongings in a couple of artists' lofts and cooperatives. In recent years, I reduced it to a storage unit with my collection of loosely organized objects and materials that I would use, trade, sell, gift and make art.
Uprooting our whole life to move was first a process of letting go emotionally of our current life. Both physical belongings and mental attachments. My first big hurdle was decommissioning this artist's life. How I would react to such a monumental change was an unanswered question that could never be predicted. The only way to answer was to do it.
All our worldly possession stored in a 5x7 locker
Simply knowing where to begin getting rid of belongings was overwhelming. In all my efforts to do this, including donations, selling, gifting, recycling and trashing, my watershed moments came when realizing my storage unit now kept our shared belongings versus my “emporium of unfinished art projects”.