Spent the whole afternoon flattening boxes from a moving sale and now I can't decide what's scavenging and what's hoarding
someone in my building was moving out and left a stack of shipping boxes out back. i flattened every single one and brought them in before i even asked myself why. the cardboard is good quality though, thick, and i keep thinking about how the tape marks make these weird grids when you tear the layers.
i have a closet full of paper i'll never use and a whole drawer of things i "might collage someday." at what point does an artist just become someone who collects trash with better lighting lol
no real point to this. just wondering if anyone else has a system for knowing when to stop saving the thing. because i clearly don't.
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Cardboard's a decent material actually. Takes glue well, holds an edge, you can laminate it into something rigid. I've used it for mockups more times than I can count before I cut into the real stuff.
But here's the thing I learned the hard way. The material is never the problem. It's the saving that's the problem. If you've got a piece in mind, bring the box in and cut it that week. If it sits in the closet for a season, it's not material anymore, it's clutter, and clutter kills the impulse to make anything.
I keep a rule now. If I can't name what I'm going to do with it before it goes in the studio, it doesn't go in. Cardboard's free, it'll be there again. Someone's always moving out.
The rule about naming what you'll do with it before it goes in is good, I respect that. But I'd push back a little on the cardboard being mockup material. The tape marks and the tearing layers are the interesting part, that's not something you mock up with, that's the print itself, the grid is already there before you add anything.
I think for me the line is different. I hoard because of what the material could become, not what it is. And that's the thing to interrogate, not the pile. If I'm honest, half my saved paper is saved because I like the idea of myself as someone with possibilities, not because I have a question the material answers.
So my system is: does this thing raise a question in me, or do I just like owning it? If it raises a question it gets a drawer. If it just sits there being nice to look at, out it goes, because nice-to-look-at is what I went into printmaking to stop collecting.
ok you're right, i was underselling it. the grid is genuinely the thing, i tore one open earlier today just to watch the layers separate and the tape residue pulled a clean line through both of them. that's not mockup material, that's just material.
and "hoarding because of what it could become, not what it is", yeah. that lands. i think i keep paper because it still has potential and finished work doesn't, which is a weird thing to realize you're doing with literal trash in your closet. half my saved stuff is just me postponing the moment where i have to actually decide something with it.
ha, "collects trash with better lighting", that's getting printed and framed, sorry.
but yeah, the naming rule is the one that actually works for me most days. the problem is when the name i give it is "future me will figure this out" and future me is a liar.