Dear Mom, Camp's Good...Send Soap

Rarely do I come across someone who requests that people help her amass a collection of more useless objects than I have in my trunk right now...but Philadelphia artist Jill Greenberg has one-upped me. "She and 20 others nationwide are participating in the Accumulation Project...The brainchild of a Brooklyn collective called Other Leading Brand, the project has each artist choosing to collect a particular something (plastic bags, opinions, gum, yellow things) for one year and then using the raw materials in an exhibition slated for New York in the fall."

(Uh, am I subconsciously taking part in this project as well? That could explain a lot.)

Anyway, Greenberg has been collecting used soap slivers from people around the country and arranging intricate mosaics from the pieces. Her reasoning? Each sliver is uniquely imprinted (physically) with the user's hand size/motion and the peculiarities of use each of us has during our daily showering ritual. Plus, she wants to know: how do people decide when a bar becomes useless? If only I'd kept that bar of Ivory my brother left behind after his most recent visit...Freud case study, anyone?

Plus, she documents her sudsy search (heh) on the Accumulation Project's blog.

Although I do have a bar of rose scented Two Girls' soap that could eventually find its way to Greenberg (Jill Greenberg, 1440 E. Baltimore St., Apt. A3, Baltimore, Md. 21231,) my contribution would be nothing compared to what Half Pint's stepdad already passed on:

"And Sheldon, of Bar Harbor, Maine, sent an 11-pound box of half-used bars of Irish Spring, found among his mother's possessions when she died in 1996. Since '96, the Goldthwaits had presented the soap collection to each new bride in the family for good luck, and the collection remained essentially intact..."

My favorite line, though, is the last in the article: "She previously worked in dandelion fluff."

Priceless.

(below: a soap mosaic, made by placing the slivers on a piece of velvet -- they're not attached and as such, the work really cannot be moved. photo from Philadelphia Enquirer article cited above.)

Comments

[eric]

Hey! Thanks for the blog!
Could you change the link to the Accumulation Project website to read http://www.accumulationproject.org
?
Thanks!
eric
AOL cd accumulator

[Jill Greenberg]

Hiya Pack Rat-orelli,

I'm not terribly familiar with the blogging phenomenon, but I dig the idea that I can sneak up on people who are talking about me behind my back. Sometimes it's fun to feel invisible! At any rate, I'm glad you appreciate the humor in my soap collecting project. It has been a hoot-and-a-half for me, but there are also aspects of it that I take seriously.

It appears that you have a connection to Sheldon Goldthwait thru "Half-Pint". This intrigues me because Ruth Sanders Goldthwait's 11 lbs of half-used bars of Irish Spring really are crucial to my collection They are so uniform in color and size that they enable me to block out my basic pattern. And the story that came with them is priceless (unfortunately the Inquirer story didn't quite get it right).

And to Dairy Queen---believe it or not, I couldn't even smell the soap anymore after 3-4 days of laying it out in the gallery. But viewers generally report a pleasant fragrance. It's not as strong as say, cologne or perfume---that would be horrendous!

So I urge any and all Gorellis to add your soap slivers to the growing collection. I'd love to have them and you know my address!

As for my art from dandelion fluff, I harvest from only the best weeds-the early spring ones. Those fluffs that initially present themselves as highly disciplined and committed to the artistic life will go through my complete training regimen. There are exercises in balance and core strength---a cross between pilates and flea circus acrobatics. If you'd like to see the results, just let me know and I'll send a coupla jpg's your way.

Please tell Cho that if she doesn't find her red cereal bowl, I will send her one of mine. It's sad when something red goes missing.

So rock on, Gorelli's! You sound like a fun-loving, off-beat crew!

Kind Regards,
Jill the Soapstress

[brandon]

i like this project. huh, wonder why? by the way c, it was dial antibacterial. u know us gorelli's hate germs.

[dairy queen]

that mosaic makes me wanna take a bubble bath.

i imagine the combo of all those soap scents emits a Crabtree/Bath+Body overload of stinks that would make me a bit nauseous.