Nail crap together and call it art

I thought I would give you a tour of my basement where all the crap I own is stored.  Within the last year or two I moved 6,000 mystery novels out of my basement to make room for my new obsession, buying stuff making art!

I do have to admit that a huge part of the fun of being a found object artist is finding the stuff.  I now hunt relentlessly through estate sales, flea markets and auctions for stuff.  And then I buy more stuff.  Seriously, some day I will use all this stuff for something, I promise.

Here is the view to the west where I have my Wall of Weird, or most of the art that I have made.  I mounted this pegboard specifically for this and also use the stairway down to the basement as a self-aggrandizing gallery of my ego.

Here is the view to the south showing my work table, saw and the best thing I ever got at a rummage sale for $30--a working drill press!!!!

This is the view to the east which shows a portion of the crap that now fills my basement to the rafters.  Before you ask, the underwear is a gift from my mother's travels down south:  they are a hillbilly briefcase.

Here is a view to the north showing storage for more of my art and, well--more crap.  This is the end of the basement that is filled with every kind of container you can imagine in my (so far) failed attempt to do a Joseph Cornell inspired work. 

Excess is an occurrence and Denice has convinced me that at this time in my life I may have enough typewriters.  P. S.:  The reason there are so many here is that the act of taking one apart, which initially seemed so appealing, now strikes fear into my heart. 


While I tried to put things where they belong (after all, I am a librarian), occasionally things begin to look like a natural disaster has struck.  Today was cleaning day and after these photos all was set right (yeah, right). 

So, here is the punch line for today's post.  This weekend I went to an estate sale in Racine, WI, where I could not resist buying eight 2' tall pink letters for $1.00.  I mean, c'mon, they were a buck.  So when I got home and proudly showed them to Denice, she asked what they spelled.  I laid them out on the basement floor and discovered a name for my man cave:

Yes, I am the King of Junk and you have just been to my Crapitol.