~=DP: Part Three=~

Part Three: What did you discover??

Found art is just that: an unplanned, unorchestrated, un-created thing that you simply stumble over one day.  You’re strolling along the street, hands in your pockets, whistling – and suddenly, your eye is taken by a certain crack in the sidewalk.  Maybe it looks like something.  Maybe it feels like something.  Ta-DA!!!  Art.  Except that, formally, I suppose you’re supposed to crowbar up the whole thing and haul it to some actual ooo-and-ahhh institution for applause, or maybe take pictures of it and use it for your Master’s thesis  before you can actually call what you’ve found “art.”

The phrase may also be applied to almost everything created in the mid to late sixties, including soup cans.

Actually, the idea is kind of stupid.  The entire planet is full of interesting, inspiring, frightening things that we experience visually – some designed by God for the purpose, some the result of happy or natural chance.  And I’m grateful, so grateful for all of it.

Anyway, I was in the shower the other day, falling asleep under the rain of hot water, when I looked up and saw this:

Not the mess off big-box, monolithic hair care bottles.

The petroglyph.

I knew it was a coyote the second I saw it.  I don’t even know how it happened to grow there on my window.  But I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  Then I had to run around the house, dripping wet, to get the camera and try to shoot it.  Which was harder than you might think – shooting something that only exists as negative space on a fogged up window.

I know it’s hard to see.  You had to actually be standing right under the shower head to see it properly, and probably being surrounded by wreaths of steam helped.  So I’m going to draw it for you:

See?  See?  And just in case you don’t quite get it yet.  Here it is without the window:

I’m tellin’ ya.  If I were some Zuni, traveling through the four corners area one day, and happened on this little dude, I’d be lookin’ for the artist and asking if he took commissions.  I KNOW he has too many legs.  That’s the beauty of it.

So some people see things in clouds.  I see things – other places.  What’s the best thing you ever saw this way?  Like, a perfect portrait of Mickey Mouse in the grain of your dining room table?  Whoa.  I remembered another one.  I’ve gotta see if I still have the shot.  The tiger in the fence.  And the zebra.  About three feet from each other.  Challenge: find something that isn’t there, and send me the shot!!!  We could do an exhibit!!  Maybe there will be a prize!!

Maybe.