Hotel Retreat, Day 4

I don't know how well this photo "reads."  It's a detail from an artwork that's hanging in the hall, outside the room where my writing workshop is held.  It's an insect made out of silverware.  The background is recycled iron.  I love this little bug.  I think it's made from forks.  Insects are so good at survival, like didn't the cockroach survive the Ice Age?  This fork morphing into insect is also about survival and transformation and valuing the tiniest things, valuing the the outcast, the forsaken, the superfluous.  Hotel life makes me treasure what in my regular life might pass for garbage.  A large plastic bag.  Great!  It becomes a laundry bag to separate my dirty clothes from those who somehow survived the trip unsullied.  One time I scissored off the top of a plastic water bottle and turned it into a vase for some flowers.  Twists and rubber bands also bring joy.  Now I'm thinking of Ajit Chauhan, who is masterful at using the discarded in his art.  Last October, Kevin and Ajit did a show together at Sight School gallery in Oakland.  The exhibit was inspired by the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.  It was incredible and I was planning to write about it here, but life demands swallowed my writing energy.  Besides working with Kevin, Ajit also collaborated on a motorized piece with Kal Spelletich of Survival Research.  Kal was fun to hang out with.  He was so friendly and at ease with people, he reminded me of a large dog who didn't know the meaning of stranger.  Since the opening went on for 3 hours, I got to spend a lot of time talking with Ajit, and he discussed many of the pieces with me.  He had one piece loaded with those little square plastic things that are used instead of twisters to close loaves of mass-market bread.  Ajit said his roommate is an intense recycler, and she has a drawer full of these little squares, and looking at them all together, Ajit was impressed with their beauty.  To be open to the glory in things so cast aside, so disenfranchised most of us don't even register them—this is a form of grace.  If I were critiquing this blog entry in a workshop, I'd say, "Unpack this grace thing, Dodie."  My thoughts on the point are, indeed, muddled, but I guess it's that I'm suspecting that moments of intense spiritual awareness more often than not are humble; they're almost humiliating in their humbleness.  Maybe I think that because I'm so not a visionary.

I just called Kevin and asked him to email me this photo.  It's not the piece I'm writing about here, but if you look closely, there are a few of those bread wrapper squares punctuating the grid and string.  If I remember correctly, Ajit found the board with the grid paper attached it it, and the string is also recycled.  Looks like there's some paperclips attached as well.  Garbage in, art out.