The other day I was considering how, at many points in my life, my artistic mediums have been dictated by the lack of finances and my desperate need to ' make things'. Fashioning a gift for someone out of bits and pieces of whatever I had in the house tested me and forced me to stretch my imagination as well as my skills. Sheer poverty has forged my creative path to the point that it defines what I now CHOOSE to use as my medium....found objects and salvaged materials. For years I had friends who would alert me where all of the ' good stuff' sitting on curbs in their neighborhoods was on garbage day. I became frightfully aware of the amount of waste in the world. It wasn't necessarily a ' groovy' thing to be doing when I was doing this...dumpster diving is not the life my parents had hoped for me. I'll never forget the day, four years ago, when a woman walked into the store where I was working, and asked me if, as a ' Green Artist' , I would be interested in teaching a series of workshops at an environmental event weekend she was planning. I was speechless....all of a sudden I had been elevated from ' Dumpster Diver' to 'Green Artist'. In my mind, they are the same things. But for most people, the term Green Artist is a lot more palatable....funny.
" I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities." - Dr Suess
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