Thursday, July 07, 2011

a garden gnome

Last year, our Arkansas garden had a ceramic rabbit in it. I still have the rabbit, but now he has a spot on my front porch.

I mentioned before that my art area's building is being demolished this summer and we're being relocated to one of the other two art buildings on campus. This moving process led everyone to clean out and pack up their spaces, which led to a lot of garbage that wasn't really garbage, as things seem to happen in big moves (I still remember the giant give and take pile that would accumulate in the dorms during move-out week. I would collect people's tossed out brand new cleaning supplies and save them for next year! All because people wanted to save a "little extra room" in their cars when moving out, they would get rid of entire bottles of cleaners, whole rolls of paper towels, and the like. I honestly did not have to buy cleaning supplies for a few years because of those piles...).

One day I entered my studio space to find this garden gnome, who is actually the Travelocity roaming gnome, sitting on my desk. I hypothesized that my studiomate Steve had put it there, because Steve loves dumpster diving for discarded art materials. I took it home with me and put him in the garden, where he has resided happily since. After posting a photo on Facebook, I even found out that the original owner was someone I knew, who was cleaning out his studio and got rid of it on account of its creepiness. ha! I ran into him yesterday and let him know that the gnome is doing well. Do you decorate your yard or garden with any sorts of objects? I've been thinking of making some bunting to hang around my fence since my yard is so small. What sort of fabric would be best for hanging outdoors in the elements, vinyl? Perhaps I could repurpose an old table cloth or something of that nature into some outdoor bunting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aww, I love your roaming gnome! I'm happy that he will have a new home with you. I think garden gnomes are adorable- once I actually have a garden I am going to have all kinds of gnomes and flamingos and lawn paraphernalia. That's funny that your studiomate dumster dives for art materials; I live right next to an art school and our back alley is always filled with mannequin parts and boxes of barbies and the most random and crazy things. The art students just take what they need and leave things they're done with- it's pretty cool!

I also wanted to tell you that I LOVE your Etsy shop! You are so talented!

Kristen said...

Oh, thank you! I do love decorating the garden. It's not exactly to my liking for now, but that's because my landlord does my lawn, and I don't want to make it super hard on him because he already has a lot of obstacles, haha.

I would love to have such a trash opportunity as that in my back alley! Are you able to salvage many things from it?

Thanks about Etsy as well! It is a fun way to partially support myself while in school (and I imagine, after I am done as well!).