The Time Capsule Project was inspired by watching this video. I watched the video and reflected on my past as a hoarder of material objects, my previous jobs at consignment stores, and my various collections of chachkies. Sure I have done my share of attaching great meaning to things. I have gotten my fair share of pleasure from acquiring rare and strange objects, but since I’ve had a child, I’ve had no time to search out new things in dusty consignment stores, or even unpack the knick knacks that I’ve kept from my great hoarding days.

 

So as I watched the video of the two women, unpacking brochures with rubber gloves, my mind kept floating toward the one person I know who would enjoy this voyeuristic material exploration as much as me, my mother. She is an artist and an appreciator of all art forms, much like myself. The two of us, in fact, snuck into a private showing of several large collaborative paintings of Basquiat and Andy Warhol in New York when I was in high school. My mother told the curator that we may be interested in buying something and inquired on the price. The curator let us in. She was my hero right about then.

 

My mother and I collaborated on a mother and daughter art show in Iowa City as one of two BFA shows I had simultaneously. The show was held at a women friendly sex shop, did I mention I grew up in a pretty liberal family? I showed fully clothed self-portraits (unusually modest for me at the time), she showed graphic photos of her recent ankle surgery.  So know you know. Our history of collaboration and our love for contemporary art and material culture is established.

 

So there’s still some more explaining to do. My mother’s house is a well-organized immaculate museum of found objects. Every time I enter her space she nervously and excitedly follows me around to if I will notice any big changes in the way her space and the objects which she’s collected over the years has been arranged, or if I spot one of her new favorite objects. Sometimes it’s impossible, because her house is comprised of these microcosms of themed arrangements. She sorts objects into drawers, she hangs objects on the wall or places them on a pedestal in bizarre and intriguing juxtapositions. Sometimes objects are arranged by size, shape color, time period, material, country of origin, texture etc. She spends hours handling and thinking about her things. Most of the objects she found at second hand shops, or tossed next to a dumpster. Some of her objects are precious, some would sell for 25 cents at a garage sale, but under her treatment she elevates them into works of art.

 

My frustration with my mother’s obsession with objects is that in many ways the relationships she has with these objects replace the space that many people fill with relationships with other people. We’ve talked about this once or twice, and my mother shrugs it off with the explanation that it makes her happy. I’ve tried to persuade her to take photos of her arrangements, because often she arranges things, and changes them before anyone visits. What is the point of all of this energy if no one besides you sees it? Again, she shrugs it off, she doesn’t do it to make other people happy, she does it to make herself happy.

 

So when the opportunity came along, to emulate the work of Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, I jumped on the chance to include my mother, the hoarder of things. She embodies the idea of material culture. So, after persuading her to play along, I insisted to her that if I were truly going to play the game like Andy would, I wouldn’t do the work at all, I would have someone else do the work for me and call it my own. My reluctant collaborator went along with it, even though I know she would take it way too seriously and it would stress her out, I asked her anyway.

In a week’s time she arrived at my house with a box and photos of all of the things contained inside. We drank coffee and reminisced, I laughed at her cleverness and thanked her again and again for her help. My mother no doubt still has a well organized suitcase of things she’s waiting to give me in 10 years, but it’s apparently not time yet, or maybe she’s given up on collecting her children’s lives and is focusing on her own, creating meaning every time she picks up one of her objects, turns it over in her hands, ponders it’s history and envisions it’s potential.