After successfully moving all my art work

After successfully moving all my art work, and the detritus that comes with it, into my studio, I inadvertently left an old dress on top of my drawings.

This week, I found that this old dress had created a sizable oil slick, a residue of mutant proportions, and that this had soaked through the best part of six drawings.  I could 1) re-do these drawings or 2) appreciate it as somehow germane to the history of the object.

I’ll just interject a note about my relative oiliness, which is in itself a rather repulsive idea, and left unchecked could get personal.  I regularly use cocoa butter cream and baby oil.  I briefly wore this dress three years ago as a prop for a series of paintings, so I am slightly troubled that this rich combination is still hanging around.  And has the will to leach.

I’ll also add a note about this pile of objects that I allowed to languish on top of my treasured art work. 

The dress, and a collection of posters, drawings and prints have been hanging up in my studio away from the dust and plaster and what have you, hanging around in general population on the floor.  They are the last things to take down and the first things to go up during a move.

One of these items is a black and white photograph of a ransacked room with a bare table in the centre.  The viewpoint is slightly elevated creating odd othangonals on the table, and surrounding the table on the floor are sheets of crumpled, torn documents.

I have had this photograph for almost a decade.  I don’t quite remember where I got it, although I remember photocopying it from a book.  And I’m not sure what it is of, although I think it may have something to do with a ministry office in France.  I’ve never used it in my practice, but it is for me one of the most perfectly conceived images that I have ever seen.

Another item is a blank sheet of brown parcel paper. 

About a year ago, I sat on this paper which was covering a table.  Again I don’t remember what I was doing or why I was not using one of the six different chairs in my studio.  I do remember that I sat on it for quite a while, and when I got up, I left what I shall quaintly describe as the impression of the seat of my jeans, in oil.  In particular, I had captured the detail of the seams and the pockets perfectly, so I kept it. 

The mutant oil impression of my jeans has now disappeared but the sheet of paper has gone up this evening as did my drawing.  I going with option 2).