Crap on my wall

When I was in high-school I was obsessed with found art. It was probably due to my then-recent discovery of Found Magazine, but I've always had an appreciation for odd things and enjoyed finding beauty in discarded items. I started off with collecting the stickers that grocers put on fruits. I would try to get as many different fruit stickers as I could find, even going so far as to walk through the produce section and peel the stickers off, saving them in my hand, and walk out without buying anything. When my parents went to Paris my mom brought back some French fruit stickers for my collection. This was only the beginning.



Once you start looking for art in the street you realize it's always been there, you've just been stepping over it. I would find notes written to lovers, drawings by kindergartners, funny posters with misspelled words and creepy characters, all sorts of weird stuff. I began hanging my pieces of art on the wall, and sometimes I made collages with my found objects. My little bedroom transformed into an outsider art gallery with layers and layers of junk from the sidewalk taped onto my walls for display.



I loved my space. It was the place where I escaped to after school. My very own fortress of solitude where I could listen to my music as loud as I liked and no one would bother me. My wall treatment was comforting in a way, and made me feel happy.



Because I was always finding things and drawing things and making things and receiving things, my room was an ever-changing canvas with new additions all the time. I started collecting autographs and show posters with a fierce determination. I got two autographs from Karen O. of the Yeah yeah Yeahs (I once saw her puking in the bathroom, clutching a 40 oz. bottle, during a show at the First Unitarian Church in Philly) and another time I stole a poster from the wall at the North Star bar and got all of Nerf Herder to sign it. Score!



Above: Karen O. signed (in gold marker) the set list for me at a YYY show, circa 2002. Below: my autographed Nerf Herder poster ("you stole our poster and stole my heart").



I took all of these pictures before moving out of my parents house two years ago. My mom wants to turn my old bedroom into a guest room and the first thing she did after I left was take all the crap off my wall. She told me that she saved my stuff, but the last time I visited I couldn't find the box where my little treasures are allegedly being held. So I'm glad I took these photos (there are more, wayyy too many to post here) to document the art that I built up over the years, but I'm also kind of glad that it's all gone now. It's part of growing up.