Camping with Mark Dion

I loved watching the PBS video in class of Mark Dion. He is very contemporary and very appealing to me. He reminds me that so much of my house and life is filled with art, I should sell tickets at my front door to My Art Museum. Let's take a little tour and see what we can see in My Art Museum.

The first exhibit is titled "Camping with Mark Dion". This is what my husband's work room and all of his campsites look like. Seriously. He is a leather artist, making period correct saddles and holsters. He should have been born 150 years ago. He focuses on the immediate post-Civil War era, but is generally interested in the history of the cowboy in the American West. The items you see in this first photo are laying all over my house. I have those same wooden nail kegs, wooden barrels, old leather doctor satchels, seriously old trunks (they make great coffee tables!), nets, traps - all of it.

The next display in My Art Museum is really funny to me because it reminds of a story that one of my husband's high school classmates told me at the first class reunion I attended with him. My husband walked to and from school with his rifle - it was allowed in those days - he was squirrel hunting both ways. He usually got one or two on the way to school, he would leave his gun in the Principal's office - that was called "gun-control" back then - and then hang the squirrels in his locker. This locker mate was always terrified because he never knew what sort of dead animal would be hanging in his locker when he got to school. I guess it was a fox one time. In any case, he was too afraid to ask my husband to please refrain from this practice on the  way to school. He also couldn't find anyone to trade locker mates with him. So he silently endured it for two years. It would be very likely that you would find this scene in one of my husband's campsites as well.





Next on the tour of My Art Museum is trunks filled with plastic toys. As I said earlier, we have plenty of old trunks, and they make great storage. My two young boys also have plenty of toy guns. I love this display - all the bright colored modern plastic guns inside of an old trunk - this is a great contrast! It makes me smile.

After that we find the coffin croquet set. I like this piece because like the plastic guns, it takes an item associated with fun and games, and turns it a little bit macabre by placing it in a coffin-shaped box. For the extra bit of final humor, we include wheels on the coffin to complete the croquet set. I grew up playing croquet in my backyard, but I know it is a much older lawn game than that. However, in My Art Museum, my croquet set would be stored in a wooden ammunition crate. They are the right length and just the right depth. This piece has humor and it makes me smile!

The next display in My Art Museum is the swizzle sticks and buttons. This is also a delightful piece for my eye - it is organized and obsessive and colorful - and filled completely with cheap, everyday items that may have been found on the ground. Again, this kind of stuff is all over my house - I pull it out of my lint trap from my dryer and sweep it out from underneath my couches. I really didn't know that I should be cleaning it off, saving it, and putting it in shadow boxes. Is it important that they are clean or can I leave the dust bunnies attached? Hmmmm......

The last picture we see in My Art Museum tour is not something inside of my house, but I could create this in my yard with the things inside of my house. I seriously love this display. Placing the books and the pictures on a tree - this is great fun to me and hugely appreciated as art. All kidding aside, this is the kind of art I love - just about anything with books turns my art on. We have bags and hanging shelves that look like old wooden swings and old pictures and books and books and more books. This is simply breathtaking. I would seriously do this in my front yard, but I would have to have a smaller tree. In my yard I have two-hundred-year-old oaks. Their first branch is about fifteen feet off the ground. I could nail the pictures right on the trunk, and I could hang ropes from the lowest branches, but it would be mostly destroyed on the first windy day. I could see this same kind of approach to a tree inside of my house. I would love to set this up on the landing of my main staircase. In one corner would be the main trunk, and then the branches could reach up two stories tall!

My Art Museum is not intended to slam Mark Dion. I think he is a great artist and I really enjoy his pieces. It really does remind me to examine my own environment and see what kind of art I have been living with my whole life. Seeing more of his pieces makes this thought run through my head: You know all of those people who go to a show and say "I could've done that" or "My kid could've done that"? Do those people go home and "do it"? Or encourage their kids to "do it"? After seeing this book tree, I know that I would seriously consider creating this in one corner of my house. This would be a great installation piece for me in my house. It would not be an original idea, it would be appropriated art. It would also not be something I would consider selling. It would be something that I would love. It would be something that I could see and enjoy everyday. It would be something that was humorous and tender and filled with memories. It would be something that would inspire me to create my own art that would hopefully fill the viewers with those same emotions. If my art could do that, it would mean that I could stop charging admission to My Art Museum and start charging to sell my work!