A Rolling Stone Gathers No...Mold

Angela opened a box of natural curiosities from her childhood and found that some things didn't hold up well over time. A sand dollar had started to mold. The rock salt had dissolved on her mineral and rock identification card from 1961. It made me think of the millions of boxes of keepsakes stashed away in attics and basements, all the childhood drawings, the heaps of dated magazines, bins of unusable cords and adapters, vintage technology, musty furniture, all sitting in the dark, where time is left to the long, dutiful job of turning things into dust. 

Dog Days

Tennis balls (some torn casings), dog hair, branch clippings with lichen, & a piece of a leash found at a dog park in Sandy River Delta Park, Troutdale, OR.

1. Tennis ball texture detail

2. Dog hair texture

3. Shrubby Sunburst Lichen (I believe) texture

And I Will Always Love You

I found this Whitney Houston tape discarded in the forest near my home. It got me thinking about technology and pop culture, how much we value it when it's on the cutting-edge only to fade into anachronistic junk, water-logged, covered in leaves and forgotten. I could almost hear Whitney's dreamy voice pining after Kevin Costner on the walk home.

Rubber Fishing

Who needs a gym when you can haul tires up an incline?

This is a shot of me pulling tires out of a pond in the Johnson Creek watershed. There were at least 50 tires in the water and surrounding acre. Along the steep embankment were bags of trash in various states of decomposition, dirty diapers, a faux-leather recliner (that sucker was heavy), a large wooden spool, drywall, and other construction materials. But! I also found salamanders under some debris and there were ducks scuttling across the pond.

Rusty paint can from the clean up.

Sun-bleached Budweiser can from the clean up.