Thursday, March 6, 2014

At work again..

Sooooo I did a grocery store stop today after work.I arrived at the store tired and ready for a nap. It was 5:02pm when I entered and retrieved my cart. I felt awkward knowing I was entering the store attempting to make a study of it and the people around. After reading the books Waste and American Wasteland I am becoming more and more repulsed by the idea of contributing to this dilemma by shopping at the supermarket. I find myself more and more disgusted thinking I have the ability to purchase all these items and some I should have never been allowed to taste because of my location. I should not know what a banana tastes like, don't get me wrong they are my favorite and I eat about 2 a day but this never would of been exposed to them a hundred years ago. I am fascinated but appalled by what has happened to our food of today and I can not possibly think about how much we throw out. It makes me nauseous.

Carrying on my notes go something like this....
 It was clam and quiet at the store, not overly crowded. My goal by coming to the store was to pick up produce that doesn't look appealing to others. I wanted to see what it would be like to make a meal out of material that seems to not be picked and some of that decision came from the idea of waste. I was concerned that if I didn't pick it that someone else wouldn't pick it and it would have a higher chance of being thrown into the dumpster and I couldn't stand that thought. So I picked this tomato.

***
I slowly sterred away from the original idea of the ugly foods because I became simply....overwhelmed with it all and started to shut down. Its a complicated process grocery shopping for myself and for work. Weird. I found myself touching food to decided whether it was good enough to take and as I read from the books that makes the fruit bruise and become unmarketable to others easier...so I tried to be more aware of that. Wow, my life is changing!! As I was walking around I heard two girls in the bakery talking to one another and girl #1 says "...and he was like what do you want to eat tonight? I said just pick up a frozen pizza! He said, you consider pizza dinner? She replied, of course! his response...'i love you'" the other girl just laughed and said that is great. I thought.....you dont even make your own pizza and you buy a frozen one? Taking nearly five minutes of prep time to half an hour of cook time and almost not mess to clean. Easy! But what a taste. I consider pizza dinner but not a frozen one! What a difference between her and I. I continued through the store and the words kept running through my head, who buys this stuff? How does it all get consumed before the next batch comes in? Impossible! I saw a woman come in and get one item from the produce section and walk out. I saw mold on a container of organic tomatoes. I wondered if I go back by the due date of the baby carrots that seemed to be stacked a mile high on March 25 if they will all be there or a new selection would replace them? I mean is it possible that many people would buy those carrots?

I started to loose myself. I was asking too many questions and feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt almost being in the store. I almost became embarrassed when I was looking through the canned and frozen aisles, I dont want people to think I eat this stuff! So I lost track of myself and I left. There were just simply TOO MANY CHOICES!!!!

I experimented when I got home.

synthetic vs. organic?
organic would be anything made from the earth regardless of gmo or pesticides
synthetic would be packaged materials like Doritos and other man made items.
would I experiment with just these two ideas almost like a battle between the outside of the store and in the inside. You know what they say everything you need is on the perimeter of the store, not in the aisles.

Should I start photographing my fridge? I have started to photograph the produce or "extras" i am throwing away now. And I find myself way more cautious of it. But does it go deeper then that. Do I start to photograph other people and their fridge and specify their family size etc.....

here are some images of "trash" or waste.

**

This is the pizza I made from all the scanned items. Without hardly any waste. 

These are scans my mentor and I spoke about. I placed them on the scanner bed and these were very quick selections but trying to see if you can tell the difference between an organic raised item compared to one that might have chemicals and gmos to grow.

Zucchini organic:
Zucchini :
Orange:

Orange Organic:
Tomato:

Tomato Organic:



Experiments my mentor and I also spoke of were to see if I could fix the image with some kind of sealant. I used matte medium on this one and you can see it dragged the color around in the paint. Maybe this is something I experiment with more but it will not fix the item needed without smudging it. 

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This one is of a coated print with rubber cement and what happened when I took the cement off. Nothing was damaged so it might be worth me playing with these printing to create a more interesting background. The thought is to make a "snow drawing" on the back or in the negative space of one of the fruit prints I have been doing. We shall see.... I might be out of luck with snow for a while. 


I also made some large prints of the snow drawings the other day and I will be hanging them up in my house and thinking of what they mean or how they relate. Not sure.... maybe the fruit prints become stars in the whole constellation but is that too literal? Haha. 
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Monday, March 3, 2014

away…..

I know I shouldn't have but I did. I went away for a long weekend. Working on some new things……..the pot is brewing over here. Stay tuned.