Tip Run

On Saturday, Jon and I went to mum and dad's house to help them clear some stuff from the attic space so that a team of electricians could gain access to the space.   

The attic is very spacious, and it's very easy to get into - it's accessed by a small door from outside Dad's office area.  So it's very handy to store stuff there.  Way. Too. Handy.  In fact the only thing which keeps you from spending a lot of time in there admiring, sorting and stashing your old goods, is that it's about 50 degrees in there on a cold day.  

Jon and I had been enlisted to bring down items from the roof, and take them to the tip.  And so we did.  It was arduous and sweaty, yet sort of interesting..we found things like rolls of old carpet that was removed so this section of the house was built (30 years ago), we found boxes of hay baling string, we came across a large selection of hilarously old clocks, enough lamp shades to open a lampshade shop. Even a box of old tennis & squash racquets - Which somehow seem to have a bit more romance about them than current models - check em out..:

And of course we came across some of my old stuff. In particular, the one thing which stood out from my year of Grade 10 Art... my giant Coke Can.  Now I must hasten to add that I didn't make this as an homage to coke - I didn't even start drinking coke until 5 years later - I made it as part of a unit on Pop Art, which I really enjoyed.  So when asked to create our own pop-art, I hand cut a huge coke-cola stencil and screen printed the poster sized sheets for the outside.  Back in those days kids,  we couldn't  print anything from the internet, so the logo was all meticulously measured and drawn to proportion from an actual coke can.  Then cutting the stencil took ages. And then because the art department only allowed us to use paper stencils, we only had one chance to get a decent result - if the paper tore or got soggy or leaked, it was too bad. My particular problem was that someone used my bright red paint between printing the coke-cola on one side, and the Coke on the other..so the colour on one side of the can was slightly different to the others..  but the result, I"m sure  you'll agree, was worthwhile..

We also found Denny's entire portfolio of work from her own year of Grade 10 art.  We were so thrilled to come into such an exciting collection that we put up a temporary gallery of the work in the dining room at Family Dinner the next day.  I hung the art a few hours before the guests (including Denny) were due to arrive, then promptly forgot about it. So when Denny arrived it took her about 10 minutes to notice it, and realise (maybe to her horror!) that it was hers...   Actually some of it wasn't too bad - and we certainly weren't hanging it up to make fun of it - I like to think this was an opportunity for a much overlooked and underappreciated artist (mum didn't even remember that Denny did art in grade 10), to get the recognition they deserve.  Unfortunately we didn't make any sales (not helped by the fact that the artist herself admitted during the course of dinner, that she may have traced some of the key pieces of the collection!). So we took it all down at the end of the evening and booted it, and the artist outt.

So now mum and dad's attic has acres of empty space - anyone need anything stored??  Oh and what became of the Coke Can? Well I have the memories, the recycling centre has the cardboard.