Philo Northrup
As a child I would steal away to the basement to escape the sound and fury of my bickering parents. Using the junk downstairs (my folks grew up in the depression and threw nothing away) I’d create assemblages – crime scene dioramas, theater sets, strange new creatures, and trophies for dubious achievements. What I make now are the descendants of these early trauma souvenirs.
Later I learned the history of this found-object art form, sprung from Dada and continued with artists such as George Herms, Noah Purifoy, Betye Saar, David Best, etc . . . and Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s fascination with “all the little tragedies in junk.”
Today we are overwhelmed by an endless firehose stream of uninvited content and discarded objects. All this refuse is choking our Earth. Give it to me. I won’t waste it; I’ll expose its artificial beauty to the light.
Give it to me. I will make art from cast-offs created by our culture of consumerism. I will reassemble it according to a new grammar, revealing the unconscious workings of us all.
I’ll use it. I’ll use it to create gleaming reflections of the source. I’ll use it to build an ArtCar and drive it over the Rockies, onto your street. I will deconstruct this river of flotsam and jetsam. I will rip it apart and recombine it into dreamscapes, frozen in ice. I’ll use it to create structure from chaos. To calm myself and you.
