Friday, January 25, 2008

The Cull Continues...

More stuff going to the dump or recycle today. I bottled the videos I mentioned yesterday and pulled them out the rubbish pile. I've set up my TBC unit and VHS player in the living room, where I can run a copy through the DVD recorder. Takes up a lot less space at least.

Quite a blast from the past today - going through all my old photos. So far I've managed to turn 4 small shoe boxes of photos into 1. I had a lot of sort of reference photos or near duplicate shots, so as much as possible is going into the bin. I wish I could do the same with all my old sketchbooks and that, but it's proving difficult.

I was going through photos of the work I did in my degree, and most of it is pretty abysmal. The more I think about it, the more I realise I didn't like doing it back then either. It's tat. I let them talk me out of doing the sort of stuff I enjoyed and taint me with a notion of what fine art should be. Large canvases, expressive oils, abstraction, blah, blah, blah.

I should have just spent my time working on small drawings and paintings of things that interested me. Instead I tried to fulfil the notions of my tutors whilst trying to include the stuff that interested me. In the end it the work was weak and uninspired. It's no wonder my final degree show went in the bin as soon as it came off the walls. There's a lot of stuff in the sketchbooks though that I can't bare to part with. Given the space they take up, I wish I could get over it.

In the bin today we have:

A carrier bag full to the top with my old photographs. Teacher training, skiing trips, Cornwall, Bangor, USA trip and more. All bar a choice few are gone both in negative and print.
The last canvas I began working on and only half finished.
Shoe boxes

Posted by Dio Bach at 14:59

2 Comments:

holly said...: I need to do this so bad. I have a closet full of crap I haven't touched since we moved into this house 10.5 years ago. I really don't want to move it again, but then again I'm a sentimental packrat and it's damn hard for me to unload anything. Restaurant receipts have sentimental meaning for me. *rolls eyes*

You're my role model right now. Keep on binning!; 4:40 AM
Dio Bach said...: I remember seeing some pictures of the inside of your house, and it was pretty packed. I do this every so often, a lot of my vinyl went this time last year just before we moved the first time.

I always feel better when I do it, but there's a hard core of stuff I just can't face to throw out. And it's a lot of stuff...; 11:30 PM