Walking and Collecting
In December 2015 and January 2016 I set myself a goal while on walks in my rural neighbourhood of Cobble Hill, BC, to look for natural and found manmade objects based on the colour wheel.
On that first walk about, I looked for all the colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet -as well as black and white.
I arranged my found items in that colour order.
December l4, 2015
A beautiful sunny morning for my walk -- I picked up lots of interesting things on the roadside.
The manmade objects included: a "Scoubidou" key chain done in a box stitch of pink and red. I used to make key chains like this when I was a kid; seeing this really brought back memories.
A piece of red plastic string, a gardening glove, HB Venus pencil, black plastic knife, two plastic lids, plastic ring, tin foil, cigarette pack, cigarette buts, dime, blue plastic doggie bag, which was thankfully -empty.
The organic items included stems from leaves, samaras or commonly know as "helicopter's" from a maple tree, purple flower, two daisy's, pieces of bark, sticks, leaves, mushroom, seed pods, mushrooms.
WALKING AND COLLECTING COLOUR
In all the photos below, I focused on one colour a day. Click on an image to view larger.
RED
December 06, 2015
Walking in the rain today. I focused on collecting mostly red objects from nature and the manufactured world. Bits of man made objects included, 2 tiny pieces from a red balloon, red tape, 2 small pieces of red plastic. A "Chupa Chups" candy wrapper in red, brown and yellow, [I have never had one]. A white plastic tip from a cigarillo, red plastic bottle cap, 2 white elasticized strings - most likely from a roasted chicken and found in different locations. Various types of leaves, blackberries on a prickly stem that I had to cut with my small red Swiss army pen knife - the blackberries were red, most likely ones that haven't ripened yet, rose hips, arbutus bark, pine cone and pine cone scales, mushrooms. A red blade of grass from a New Zealand flax plant from the front of our property. Salal leaves with their red stems...one was an older leaf that had turned red and two small new leaves. Interesting how they are both red at either end of their life cycle. Love those large brown/red mushrooms with their fancy gills.
ORANGE
Variation with same items, but on a different background.
December 07, 2015
The challenge on today's walk was to find objects that were orange. Five minutes into my walk I found an orange balloon - I couldn't believe it. Turned around and across the road was the remains of a pumpkin - probably from Halloween, it was mushy buy I could pull the skin off in several pieces; felt very pleased with that find, even pulled off the short stem. Other finds today were a orange cigarette butt, a pink plastic circle with a hole in it - kind of like a life saver shape; and a metal washer. I was really pleased with the orangey rose hips and even two orangey roses in not too bad of shape but really on their way out. I found those at a little park. It is really interesting that once you put your focus on something how that particular colour just pops into view. I know the balloon and pumpkin had been there for a while but I hadn't even noticed them. This is turning out to be a really fun project and it gives a whole different feel to my walk and what I look at and notice. I love it!
YELLOW
December 09, 2015
Well, I never thought that it would be hard to find yellow. It really took a lot of sleuthing on my walk today to find yellow. There is yellow orange, and yellow green but to find just yellow was hard at this time of year. I found a mushed up phone book that someone had driven over dozens of times in their drive way, I brought it home for the yellow pages. I found a small yellow Rona Hardware bag - the kind you put nails in. In terms of yellow - that was all I could find for found objects. I did a lot of editing, so there was some material gathered that didn't make it to the final cut.
I did a lot of editing, so there was some material gathered that didn't make it to the final cut.
GREEN
Composition with all the found materials.
Composition on a different background and the materials have been edited.
