Art of the Abandoned








































Ya’all know I adore going to abandoned places and taking photos portraying the decay and the beauty. There are a lot of artists who are into abandoned places. I’ve found some amazing ones.

This artist, Noel Kerns (photo of truck stop above), crawls his way into abandoned places and puts up glowing lights of different colors within and photographs them. The effects are haunting and amazing!

Michael Platt, a DC artist, combines pencil drawing, photography and printmaking into beautiful works in a collection called “Abandoned” The photo above shows his work called “The Fountain.”

Artist and activist Jane Samuels makes performative interventions into abandoned buildings (see strange picture above with the deer-head). Armed with ropes, torches, gloves and face masks (the uniform of the explorer, the activist and the criminal) she explores houses, lunatic asylums, hospitals and schools. With her she takes a human cast of “characters”, wearing costumes inspired by folklore and urban legend, and creates theatrical, often unsettling photographic images that respond to each sites suggested narratives. On each occasion the casts are comprised of differing social groups, e.g. a group of her fellow animal rights activists or a group of practicing Buddhists.

I’m working to collect items in abandoned places—little trinkets that when touched have a psychically strong emotion tied to them. I hope to construct jewelry and other items using these emotive objects and enhancing them with the proper gemstones to hopefully make it possible for the average person to feel the emotion tied to the item. I’m accruing it all together so during the hot months in the desert, I can create these little steampunk-ish objects with psychic treasures within.

Abandoned sites are so enchanting. Something about life being gone from the spot gives it whole different feel. Do you ever come back from vacation and your house smells wrong, feels wrong—seems kind of hollow and weird proportions? That’s what happens when there’s no life within for a period of time. You come in, settle down, run your laundry, troll through the refrigerator’s leftovers, but the place won’t feel like home until probably the next day—with enough hours of humans residing within…

Comments

  1. Very interesting!!! I like the perspective. Great Post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Such a perfect post. I love coming across abandon things....we went off-roading in Florence a few weeks ago and found an abandoned homestead. I always stop and really look and think about people living there. The picture of the homestead is on my blog...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Us ghost hunting gals are planning a day trip to Florence soon and Adamsville which is the town within Florence that washed away in a flood long ago. The cemetery is left and it's really wickedly creepy. I wanted to do photography of the fantastic abandoned stuff there. That town is just weird and unsettling. I love the town museum--as a psychic it gives me super chills--from the artifacts inside. This week, I'm heading to the desert near Maricopa to an abandoned site to video and photograph it--should be up on the site this week some time. Seems there's more and more of these places nowadays. My in-laws are up in Cherry and they have this miner's shack way up in the mountains there that's been abandoned forever, stuff still on the shelves and uber creepy. I love that stuff-can't get enough. The only way up there is by ATV.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As you already know, I like to snoop around abandonded places when I can find them. That ole' Gas Station looks like it was once a busy place, but is no longer. There are other places around here that I just didn't get too yet. The Coal Region Area is full of them, but I don't know where all of them are. I'll work on that.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Les;
    That would be awesome. Yeah, Rt. 66 out here has a lot of them, but our rural towns are loaded. This week, I hope to film one and put it on the blog.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment