Report from the Edge

Next time you're in Asheville, skip the Biltmore house and get yourself to Trash, Inc (www.trashincasheville.com) to find the REAL Asheville.  Trash is a creative reuse center that also has a gallery of art and other objects made from trash.  While I was there this past weekend checking out things, always on the lookout for the amazing and the bizarre, I came across a wooden box filled with white sand upon which were arranged about a dozen eerie little ceramic figures and an assortment of large black alphabet letters.  I thought it was an installation, but the storekeeper told me it had been brought in by an anonymous artist who wanted to donate it to Trash.  The Trash workers had arranged the figures and letters in the wooden sandbox.  It seemed wrong to break up the arrangement, but I couldn't buy the entire setup even at its rock-bottom price.  So I bought the two pieces you see here, a black and white head and a strange little white figure with the word "longing" written across its chest.  The pieces have holes in their heads so they can be stuck on nails and hung on a wall.

I've been living with them for a few days now and know that I have to go back for more.  I love that they're anonymous, not for sale in a slick gallery, not accompanied by an academic Statement.  They've just slipped into the stream sort of.  They gave me the same kind of feeling as the strange little arms and hands that I saw (but didn't buy) a few weeks ago at Tobacco Barn, another sort of limbo place for objects.

The hands are made of a sort of slippery white stone or some kind of coated cement maybe.  Small, without any apparent function except that they have screws sticking out of the ends.  It's amazing to think of someone making these things.  They beckon and beseech.  Stay tuned for more reports from the edge.