There comes a time when you know in your heart that it’s time to retire a piece of furniture. After years of love, use, abuse, and many, many smells, it is time to say goodbye forever.
What does it mean to throw away something in the garbage can?
The Hijinx Household Goes To The Landfill
We inherited a big stinky sectional that was too large for our living room. After many lazy afternoons of couch-rotting, naps on the chaise, and human gas passed directly from the source into the sponge-like material, it was time to retire.
Instead of paying a business to take away our garbage for us, we decided to deconstruct and dispose of the sectional in smaller pieces.
We brought the heaviest parts of the sectional (the metal reclining bits) to be recycled at the dump on our own so as not to make our garbage cans too heavy for the weekly garbage trucks.
This brought us to the Dane County Landfill. Two words: utter chaos.
Contractors, construction workers, random dudes with bales of hay. Not a landfill employee in sight.
Trucks, semis, and cars. The whole place is an uncontrolled intersection. The source of the perpetual back-up beeping unknown.
Big signs saying what goes where. People ignoring those signs completely. Loud machinery crunching trash.
The only landfill employee we saw was an extremely friendly gentleman at the exit there to collect our payment.
What's Worth Keeping
Most of this old couch is indeed destined to be put to rest. Some of it recycled, burned, or buried on trash hill. However, I desperately wanted to make something with All That Fluff!
We harvested about 10 garbage bags full of stuffing from this fucking couch. The foam cushions were bundled together and encased in fabric for a small daybed about the size of the former chaise.
What does one do with so much stuffing? Make a friend :-)
It’s been said before that I’m in my “worm era.” I’ve been asked why I like worms so much.
Worms are weird and gross little hermaphrodites who are largely under appreciated decomposition workers within our ecosystem. I like an underdog.
Fun fact about worms: the band at the front of a worm is called a clitellum and it is indeed a sex organ that produces a slimy mucus during reproduction.
A worm’s segmented body also translates quite nicely into a quilted patchwork body pillow.
In a typical fiber artist fashion, I posses a large amount of random fabric and fabric scraps as well as embroidery floss. Many of these materials came to me secondhand, saving the original owners (and myself) a trip to the thrift store.
Shoutout to TacoCat Creations for being my secondhand yarn and fabric plug.
Born From The Trash: Grima Garbitch Wormbo
Hand-sewn together are 16 panels of fabric. Seams are reinforced with a sewing machine. Two buttons sewn on the first panel bring this worm to life.
Stuffed with 2-3 trash bags full of couch stuffing. Grima & all her glory is about 11 feet long.
Not Done Yet
With much stuffing leftover after Grima’s birth, we are expecting more worms.
This one turned out to be a snake.
Another artist friend who screen prints and scissors shirts to sell cropped tops graciously gave me some t-shirt scraps perfectly colored and sized for worm segments.
Shoutout to bernie & zuzu.
Worm Are They Now?
Since the beginning of this project, I have made 24 worms.
It has been brought to my attention that this is, in fact, not normal behavior and people don't typically just make 24 tube-shaped friends.
The truth is, this project has been helping me hold on to my sanity. Instead of making art for strangers in exchange for money, I've made art solely for my friends in exchange for love!
While the initial goal was to create a pile of worms in which I could take a nap, it has evolved into a manifestation of my love for the people who matter to me.
Since achieving a reasonably sized worm pile, I began gifting worms to people who visited me and witnessed said pile. I've invited some friends into the pile to watch TV and it has been glorious.
It's cozy AF.
There is even a fish.
I also had some fun playing with some stamps, printmaking patterns onto some segments AND printing eyeballs onto felt.
This guy along with a few others will be on display at Polka! Press during MMOCA's Gallery Night on Friday November 6th from 5-9PM. Stinky ass MMOCA decided to spotlight an AI "artist" this year so we are hosting an anti-AI open studio!
Thank you for reading about my worms. I hope this project inspires you to make some garbitch friends of your own.
XOX,
Jinx
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