Friday, May 22, 2009

The Joys of Garage Sales



Daughter and I went to G-Kids school for a tea party and entertainment.


On the way home we were bitten by the Garage Sale bug. Years ago I released my inner pack rat and started to comb second hand stores, yard sales, junk yards etc. Once, I lost my old boots to a shoe repair shop, they had been all over Europe with me. I found them at a flea market, it was like finding an old friend. I actually shook with excitement at seeing them.

My mother, grandmother, sister are junk collectors they seriously save everything. My Grandmother had a box car filled with magazines, clothes, newspapers, records, can labels, diaries simply everything. My mother also horded and saved she shopped second hand stores compulsively collecting purses. Patty my sister is a master collector with the most amazing ephemera, bottles, trunks, trinkets, jewelery, boxes, old glass chaskies. It is packed in boxes in the attic for her grandkids to discover. She knows the secret pleasure of snooping just like me. I have an excuse for collecting junque, it's for art.

Quote out of the Art of Assemblage

Junk culture is city art, Its source is obsolesce, the throwaway material of cities, as it collects in drawers, cupboards, attics, gutters, waste lots dumps.
Objects have a history: first they are brand new goods, then they are possessions accessible to few, subjected, often to intimate and repeated use; then as waste, they are scarred by use but available again… Assemblages of such material come at the spectator as bits of life, bits of the environment. The urban environment is present, then as the source of object whether transformed or left alone. Lawrence Alloway


Here is what I bought:

  • Doll heads and body parts. .50

  • No hands magninfing mirror .75

  • Old mason jar for Folgers coffee 2.00

  • leather toolers letters (some missing) .50

  • Blue pottery bowl med 4.00

  • New Lancome brush set, eye makeup remover and cosmetic bag 3.00

  • Big Lace crochet doilie FREE

  • Bottom Line 10.75

Yesterday I took my $75.00 winnings and bought myself a new comfortable pair of Burkenstocks for $71.00 and treated myself to a black tea chai smoothie, yummy.





4 comments:

Unknown said...

my hubby as the garage sale bug seriously or would if i let him - he is forced to confine himself tot he pickings of the town swap shack... you go and leave stuff you dont want but cant bear to throw away and are free to help yourself to anything thats there...

Patti Gibbons said...

I used to love to go junking. Now I am getting rid of stuff as things got out of control. And, I need money, lol. Nice way to go winning a prize! YAY!!!

Judy Vars said...

I do not shop as much as I used to sometimes finding the junque for assemblage art is a kind of Kismet pretty fun.

The town swap sounds great I wish there was something like that in Alaska. Most people think their trash is worth soo much money it's stupid. I just walk away.

LL Cool Joe said...

That sounds like a whole load of fun! I could fill my house full of lots of bits....oh wait I do, but now I'm trying to be a bit more controlled. I always have these great ideas for a sculpture or something and then of course it never quite happens.