Here’s a piece that will be part of my upcoming art show. I thought I’d call it Five Things I Want to Remember. It’s made with fabric trim that was given to me in a giant container of cast off odds and ends, wooden spools of thread that came in other big bins of cast offs, beads, and gold leaf.

A couple years ago, I got a whole bunch of gold leaf as part of yet another big box of cast off art supplies. I’ve enjoyed incorporating the gold into my found object art since then. I like the visual metaphor of gold leafed trash. I like thinking of the layer of gold like the layers of meaning that we all give everyday objects. They’re unremarkable objects, yet we handle them and they become precious to us. This can be good and bad.

The gold leaf can also suggest the practice of searching for joy and beauty in the everyday things around us. The gold adds significance and calls attention to details such as the way that thread wraps itself around the spool or the subtle undulations of a roll of trim as it unrolls itself.