Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Broken Vase

by Drew Martin
It is bulk-trash pickup today in my town. It is a day when I should be blindfolded, bound with zip-ties and locked in a windowless room. Bulk-trash pickup day happens twice a month and you can put anything bulky out on the curbside and the town garbage collectors will pick it up and toss it in their truck. I live in a nice town so people throw out nice things, often because they are bored of them but usually because there is something broken. I never go out of my way for it - some people drive around in pick-up trucks the night before and collect everything they can - but I certainly have had absurd bounty: electric lawn mowers, cross-country skis, museums pedestals, etc. This morning I was running through the hills of my town. It was still dark, which is a time you should definitely not trash-pick because it is hard to assess the condition of something. Midway through my run I saw a huge, broken Greek vase. It is entirely kitsch but it was also such a great big sculptural object. So I picked it up and ran about two miles with it home and placed it on my art/junk wall outside my house.