METAL PILE

METAL PILE

2025

The METAL PILE SERIES started in 2025, a turn from the transfer station series, which had been a focus for several years. 

The lure of the metal pile in it's arbitrary and random glory comes from both watching people unload unwanted things most of which are metal, and hurl them into a big pile, or place them around the perimeter of the pile; and, also the lure is in looking at the objects themselves, discarded and overlapping and entangled. 

Choosing what to look at and how to see it and photograph it as it defines itself as something new, something other than its purpose was in its earlier, useful life, is that second aspect to this series: the stuff and the people leaving this stuff of their lives behind. 

  • There are those people who get back in their cars straight away after leaving things, and then there are those who wait, who look, who comment to others looking at the tools strewn in front of them, left by someone else, tools that represent the most important industries of the twentieth century, so these people looking around say, with much respect. 

    There is truly respect for the work that was created with the tools. Too, there are people who pick up a lamp or a shovel with a broken handle and plan to repair them at home: surely there is use left, surely a repair can be made to the tools, car parts, cast iron bath tubs, heirloom Erie Pennsylvania frying pans, professional fishing gear, window screens, ice skates, and trails of strewn nails, cat food cans, colanders, spatulas and sheets of rusted steel and, well, everything else. 

    A cornucopia of rust, wire, fireplace pokers, knives, things too large and heavy to lift that were slid off the backs of dump trucks. All now waiting for the periodic scraping of the back hoe which lifts some, pushes some, clears the area  and makes room for the next collection.

    This is most definitely a place to record what is going on: now and going forward.