Saturday 31 January 2009

Pavement Exhibition

This is another one of Keri Smith's 100 ideas-number 1 in fact, and the one that grabbed my attention the other day on Anairam's blog. The idea is -'Go for a walk. Draw or list the things you find on the sidewalk.' Well I cheated and took photos-captions will be my list. The items are in the order I saw them so it will be as if you are stumbling along with me, staring at the ground. (I do that quite a lot anyway if only to avoid the more unpleasant aspects of a dog's day.) A tiny and worn piece of gold foil which looks to me like a tiny skull. This was my favourite find.
A spray cleaner bottle.
A broken red elastic band.
A block of laminated chipboard.
A quite unpleasant looking rubber glove.
A dried up leaf of 'fatsia japonica'-castor oil plant.
A Ribena carton lurking under a bush.
This fits in that it is on the pavement so I included it!
A temporary traffic light warning sign.
A Wild Bean Cafe coffee cup-squashed.
Something blue and a ringpull.
An unidentifiable aluminium drinks can-flattened.
A tiny green flower-not sure what from.
A small picture of a blue creature.
A section of a Doritos packet.
One page from local newspaper 'The Mercury'
Bright yellow ticket.
Battered cardboard fruit packaging-my second favourite item.
Ridged plastic cup-fawn coloured I think.
Red and white paper item.Abandoned school work.
Plastic carrier bag.
Some drawers, a chair, a bookshelf, quite artfully arranged, for rubbish.
Plastic drinks bottle.
Large sheet of MDF.
Mayfair cigarettes empty packet of ten. I saw four cigarette packets and they were all Mayfair-are people who smoke this brand more messy than other smokers I wondered.
I know this is integral to the pavement but I really like these-the letter, the pattern and the lightbulb shape.
Shandy can-not squashed.
Peace sign in the form of a twig.
Blackened banana skin.
Well, I am not sure how much I liked this exercise because it really made me focus on how much rubbish is on the street-including large items like the furniture. This is only a tiny sampling of what I saw too. I did like one aspect-the largely grey backgrounds to the items and the geometrical shapes of the paving. (two aspects!)
I wrote this yesterday after my walk. Tonight it is snowing-proper big flakes which are lying! I am quite excited and may go out for a quick walk just in case it is gone tomorrow.
Have a good week!

4 comments:

Shell said...

I think it's a cool idea. Even if you didn't dig all you saw. You could adapt to your own: take pictures of doorways, clouds, trees or animals walking around.

Sarah said...

That's true. Clouds would be a fun one!

Elizabeth said...

You are looking with clear bright eyes.
That's sort of what blogging does - makes us look more carefully.

Splendid word verification:
pasts


all your castaway objects have histories somewhere..

Anonymous said...

Interesting post. I don't pay much attention to the trash I pass along the sidewalks. I probably will now.