erosion bundles

It's cold; cold for Alabama, at least. By the time I was done, I could barely wrap the gardener's wire I was using to put my bundles in place.

I've wired all three bundles to some chain link fencing (a little rust from rain run off?) near the bottom of our yard. Our dogs and cats observed the process with great interest and I'm watching to see if the squirrels and birds will get involved.

I've named each of the bundles to make it easier to follow their progress:

Phoenix

And Canvas

Now it's just a waiting game to see what happens. Cold is in our forecast — perhaps a rare Alabama snow later in the week. I've placed them where they are sure to have tree blossom, nuts, and leaves rain down on them, hopefully leaving some dye marks on the outer wrappings, at least. And some rust would be nice. But there is no telling what the result will be.

The idea behind Erosion Bundles is simple — take some items you want to use in collage or assemblage, expose them to the elements in a random fashion for several months, and see what turns up. The idea seems to have been first adopted by a blogger named Seth Apter, whose thought was to “hang, bury, submerge, or just place” the bundle one made of one's art objects in the elements.

When Kris came up with the idea of a group of us setting bundles out now to use in a collaborative book later on this spring, I found the idea to be irresistible. I've put together three bundles to set out in the morning — I'm thinking about wiring them to our back fence and subjecting them to the dogs and the seven year old, along with the rain and the mud.

The first bundle is actually a thinly constructed wooden box, hinged, that I have filled with some papers I want to use and wrapped in denim.

The second bundle has a linen canvas for its base. I have tied a series of objects onto it, leaving them quite exposed. The objects include a glove, a slide, a fragment of a ruler, some painted papers, mother of pearl buttons, and some silk fabric.

The final bundle starts with an old notebook — I found a stash of these in our local Storehouse furniture store when they went out of business several years ago. I've placed papers and fabric and German scrap and other ephemera in between some of the pages before wrapping them in cotton sheeting and kitchen twine. At the last moment, I stamped a small canvas with the word "Phoenix," anticipating that the items in the bundle will rise out of their exposure in a few months and have a new life.

Tag: erosion bundles

Erosion Bundles: In Place