Collections
Pop Tart Art. Front cover of The Lantern showcasing my collection of Polaroids.
2003
It would be impossible to talk about my work without touching on my penchant for collecting. Each of my projects involves amassing material to some degree and honestly may often be the chief reason of their existence.
Over the years I have collected many things for many reasons and sometimes no reason.
I have been a collector for as long as I can remember. To paraphrase my a saying of my grandmothers I “come by [collecting] naturally.”
Stopping short of calling them hoarders, my grandparents had a lot of stuff. Their house was brimming with decades of clothes, records, photographs, papers, and mountains of ephemera. I spend lots of time at their house and they gave me free reign to comb through everything. The garage, basement, and every closet was filled floor to ceiling with boxes to be excavated, detailed, and organized. Left to my own devices for hours I was like an explorer with my expedition being a split level at the end of a cul-de-sac.
My grandparents let me keep many long buried items (unsent postcards from annual vacation spot of Cape May, New Jersey; 70s pamphlets on talking to your teenager about drugs; paper ephemera from my grandfather’s career as a health inspector to name a but a few). I made some familial discoveries as well including the mystery of my grandmother’s quasi-estrangement from her brother and that my mother was briefly married before my father.
Without any real friends in my youth as well as being an only child until my teens left me often quite lonely. Bouncing back and forth between divorced parents living on opposite ends of the country added a sense of feeling adrift. Collecting, amassing, and organizing whatever brought order to a childhood that was otherwise chaotic. Being surrounded by stuff insulated me from all aspects of my life that I had no control over. Ironically I’m assuredly not alone in this feeling. No doubt this is many a collectors origin story.
Below are examples of some things I’ve collected over the years along with pages to some deeper dives because collecting is also a compulsion and I can’t help myself.
Postcards
A collection that originated from digging through my grandparents stuff, postcards appeal to me for many reasons; such as their uniformity, saturated colors; and general cheapness to collect.
I took the concept of one image to describe a place for my project The Lovely Road. Generally I shot no more than Polaroid per subject preferring to create what in my mind would be the definitive descriptive image for each subject. [MORE]
Selection of my collection of lobster themed postcards.
Roadside Attractions
Starting in 2001 I began criss-crossing the country looking for roadside attractions, tourist traps, and folk art sculptures. As of this writing I’ve visited over 700 sites in these categories. In addition to seeing some pretty far out stuff, visited some off the beaten path places,, and created quite a few stories. [MORE]
Various roadside attractions visited on my 40th birthday road trip in 2021.
Polaroids
Over a ten year period working primarily on The Lovely Road project, I created roughly 5,000 individual Polaroid photographs, primarily in the 600 film format. One of the many features of the Polaroid that attracted me to the format was it’s uniformity. Each individual print comes neatly framed with a white border. Over time, as I took more and more photos, the collectability of the physical print grew to be nearly as important as the subject matter I was capturing.
I not only used Polaroids to document my travels, but also the people in my orbit at the time as well.
My friends are very precious to me, and I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by many good and interesting people; a sharp contrast from my youth.
If I could find a way to physically collect All The People in my life, I would. Oh wait….
Educational Films
The early days of my nine to five job consisted of a lot of repetitive, mindless tasks. I kept myself entertained by taking a deep dive into the world of educational films. Educational films are usually short and to the point: teaching you or warning you about something in a short period of time with either a comical clumsiness or a humorless banality. My favorites are those made outside Hollywood by real folk and similar to my love for postcards have a profound earnestness. Over the years I have collected several hundred; many of which were sampled in the early days of Bad Movie Nite!
Here are some of my favorites: The Last Prom; Soapy the Germ Fighter; Vision in the Forest; Shake Hands with Danger.
Selection of proofs from my grandmother’s career in real estate.
