Our minds are always active. We hear, smell, taste, see and touch things around us all the time.
Our life experiences help us to interpret all these stimuli. Some of these stimuli are familiar to us and our minds associate them with our past experiences. Smell is one of our senses that can easily bring up memories associated with a past experience, person or place.
The smell of fresh baked bread reminds me of my mother who was a great cook. Shaving cream reminds me of my father who shaved with a safety razor after he lathered his face with a wet soapy brush swirled over shaving soap in a mug. It also reminds me of his annoyance when as a teenage, I used his safety razor to shave my legs and dulled the blade.
A whiff of cow manure through my car window while driving in the country past a farmer spreading manure reminds me of the time my brother and I were put to work clearing stalls in our family barn. I ended up with blisters that day and a continued aversion to the smell of manure. The smell of fresh mown hay reminds me of driving the tractor while my brothers threw bales onto the wagon behind me, headed for the hay mow.
Our daily experiences can bring back many memories, good and sometimes not so good. My experience has been that the not so good experiences tend to revisit me in my dreams. Many subconscious associations tend to pop up in our nocturnal musings. Recurring dreams, especially difficult ones can signal repressed experiences of not so good memories and sometimes require the help of a therapist to uncover and deal with. For me, happy dreams include visits from loved ones no longer with me.
The artwork attached to this months blog is called “Thought”. It was created in 2019 and was part of a group show that year at the Station Arts Gallery in Tillsonburg. The piece is made of recycled aluminum from cans saved for me by a number of great friends. Cider cans and large beer cans work best as they have more metal in them. The cans were cut open and annealed with a propane torch. After cleaning off the soot, I cut the aluminum in the smaller shapes then drilled them with a drill press. Some of the pieces were carved with a dull pencil to create a variety of images, they were all painted with alcohol inks. Some were crimped and some had embroidery added using the drilled holes. The pieces were then attached to upcycled strips of sari silk through a pair of drilled holes using thread and a clear button.
The strips of sari silk were then attached to a plexiglass disk that my son Adam made for me on his laser cutter and kindly shipped to me from Calgary. The disk is attached to the ceiling using a swivel so that the whole piece will turn when air currents are created by people walking past it.
There are 625 individual pieces of metal in the hanging sculpture. Our minds are bombarded each second with one million bits of information. Fifty bits are taken in by our brains. Twenty-five by our conscious mind and 25 by our unconscious mind. This piece represents 12.5 seconds of Thought. No wonder our brains are always working overtime and our nights are filled with dreams.
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