Recognizing an Altarpiece

There are times when I am like a magpie while walking around my small city, eyes looking to tell the brain to swoop down on something glimmering.  Of course, much of what I stop to pick up along a sidewalk or even perhaps while exploring a vacated apartment, is only shiny in my mind's eye.  Case in point:  recently while going out for a cigarette from the office building where I work I passed what I thought to be a dark brown piece of corrugated cardboard in the alley.  I cogitated a bit on it, and the situation of litter in general that seems especially prominent on blustery days, and as I was heading back something about the shape of what I took to be cardboard gave me pause.  It was then I noticed that the object was actually plastic, the hue of a milk chocolate brownie which looked like the edges had been nibbled off.  On even closer look I realized it was a bas relief of a structure, a souvenir actually depicting Washington Cathedral, and not far from it were the two broken corners which completed its frame.  I put the pieces in my pants pocket wondering if someone in a fit of pique had hurled it from a window or if a gust had come through that person's cubicle and tore it off the wall.  I could picture it sailing, a tiny raft, a bit of refuse on its journey, quite happy to be saved by the passing garbage picker known as me.

What will I do with this thing?  Glue it together and use it for rubbings, for stencils, or adhere it to some future art piece?  Decisions, decisions...

All of the spaces where I've lived have accumulated these sort of fragments, not necessarily organized in any sort of cohesive fashion, nor even stored intelligently for preservation purposes.  I am a dumpster diver with snobbish aesthetics, a bag person with a strange artistic strain in the genetic make-up of my particular chemical brain imbalance.  There used to be some sort of moral guilt or shame about this, but as I've gotten older and as much of this detritus has found its place in various art projects,  I've come to the conclusion that this quirk in my nature might be doing the environment some good and is certainly far less macabre than collecting body parts.

On occasion I may be asked where a particular scrap, such as an arrowhead, jewelry bit or old lighter holder depicting a jade whale, originated from, before winding up in one of my mixed media artworks, but many of these things now have a sort of mist about their roots, keeping their secrets like curves within sea shells.  This is the case even for materials I have painted on and glued things to, for I am also a recycler of found canvasses, paintings etc. others have chucked that I decide either to paint over, sometimes allowing details of the original composition to come through.

I have two equally distinct memories of how I came across an old three-piece mirror I recognized an altarpiece in, but again there is that mistiness about location.  It is the seeing and bringing home of the actual object that is most clear.  I mean I knew at once how I was going to use it even if accomplishing the project might not start automatically.  The mirrors were still attached to the backing, hence the shininess this black crow zeroed in on, for they sparkled in the darkness of their setting.  In other words, I am quite sure it was night when I found the piece, for that is the best time in a college town to see what others have put in the trash.  But the surrounding darkness might have also been from the dimness of a community cellar in the old house where my apartment at the time was located; solitary insomniac hours again the best time to rummage through what former tenants left behind.

In any case, vanity be damned, though I kept them and later used them as backings in makeshift tableaus, I wasn't really interested in the mirrors.  It was the shape of the backing, the curves of the panels, held together by a couple of somewhat rusty hinges which called to me.  Sometimes I imagine in a previous life I may have been a monk given the grunt work tasks which went into creating illuminating manuscripts, or one of those anonymous artist apprentices getting lost in the details of the great masterpieces, being assigned the painting of an arched hand for example while the genius I worked for got credit for the whole kit and caboodle.  What artist/artisan even thinks about creating triptychs anymore?  It is another way I am an anachronism.  All over the world today artists are painting the pain of one Guernica or another and who stops to take notice when competing against prime time shows like "Survivor"?

But I digress, seeing a potential triptych in a junked mirror is just the sort of thing which gives me the frisson of creative excitement.  The wondering about exactly what images would arise as I removed the mirrors for instance, or the technical aspects of canvass vs. paper as a surface for the backing.  Even the outlining and cutting of said canvas or paper created a challenge given my all-thumbs temperament and abilities.  Still, with each step, leading to the final processes of sketching. then painting, or layering actually, coming up with something a bit like old egg tempera for the Impatiently Challenged...yes, with each step, the process became the point.  Choosing and composing angels, the sweep of their wings, their eternal task such as dropping rose petals, was given to me both by what somebody else had tossed out, and what glorious story that throwaway orphan had to tell.

Sure, this altarpiece, which now resides in a zipped pillowcase in my own cellar and, after I die, may one day find itself heaped with rest of my work on its way to a landfill, but I don't see much point in worrying about that.  I am too old to die young and unsung so toot my own song for this age I have been given unto.  It seems to me the triptych acknowledges that folly with something like tender compassion and grace.  If this is the best I can hope for than that's pretty good.  I am grateful and, as I write this, at peace.