What Relics are Teaching Me

More photos from my trip back ‘home’, where I grew up, where I have watched as things change and transform into something else.

A lot of emotions welled up to the surface of my consciousness starting January 1. We arrived in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve night, and the next morning, I hit the ground running. I wanted to explore in depth what I was feeling by taking my camera and capturing scenes and objects that ‘spoke’ to me that day. Upon looking at the large collection of photos, a theme began to emerge. 

I was looking at the past in order to determine my future. 

Clues emerged during this process of uncovering some dominent themes I am currently grappling with.

My brother asked me a question, a harmless inquiry, about my jewelry business. He wanted to know what my plans were to scale it to a bigger enterprise. 

It pissed me off. Not a rational reaction to a what has become the end all, be all of business. Scale it out, just do the design work, hire others to make what I make with my own hands and make more money, you know, the usual attitude about such things.

I know when I react strongly to something that I need to digest the message my emotions are trying to awaken in me. So, as I wasn’t ready to talk about it anymore, I set about finding my way to the answer by looking at what I was consciously or unconsciously deciding to surround myself with. 

I saw structures that were built during a time when materials were scarce, when boards weren’t always precision cut and design decisions were made for utilization instead of decoration. Things had to last a long time, because we didn’t live in a one-night stand, fast-food world back then. People were accountable to each other. If you had a ‘thing’ it was because it was useful or it was because it held great meaning to you. Nothing was throw-away. 

When a system or a structure, or a way of thinking becomes outdated, we start to make small modifications to it, trying to adapt to a new way of experiencing our world in fits and starts. But eventually, you have to abandon those old, outdated ideas or structures and let nature take its course. Let nature reclaim it and build something new in its place. But new doesn’t have to mean shallow. It doesn’t have to mean cheap. It doesn’t necessarily have to scale out and become meaningless so it can be accessible to everyone.

But there are lessons from the old way of doing things that can be brought forward to the present. That is where I am right now in my thinking about our economy, our social systems and my little jewelry business. I am working my way through this veil of emotion that is fogging up my way towards clarity.

These photos were taken in a small town called Bigelow in Arkansas. The majority of the them were taken on private land. I walked into the only Barber Shop there to find out who I need to ask to shoot them…and the barber said as long as I didn’t abscond with the flywheel from the old cotton gin, I could take as many pretty pictures as I wanted to. He said the owners were his third cousins and if anyone asked what I was doing, to say that the Barber said it was ok. 

I love that about small towns.