One Man’s Treasure
I was helping my mom out with her garage sale. It was a good day for people watching as well as studying humanity.
In general, it was people, just like me, shopping for unique bargains. But there were subtle variations of this as well. I recall the nicely dressed gentleman who drove up in a beautiful Lexus; what was he doing at a garage sale? Turns out he was shopping for bargain amenities for his son’s college dorm. Then, there’s the old curmudgeon who spent a lot of time arguing and haggling with my mom over $5.00 for a brand-new propane gas grill. He finally walked away, all in a huff, without the grill. Then there was the artistic lady who bought the vintage Scrabble game; it had the old polished hardwood letter tiles; she planned to convert them into jewelry parts.
As I recalled the idiom that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, I was reminded of the artist Picasso, who frequently visited the junkyard. Digging through piles of trash, he would bring his “treasures” back to his studio, where he would weld and glue the parts together. A mold was made, and it was cast in bronze. My favorite of these Picasso creations is displayed in our Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It’s a mother baboon holding her baby. It’s a beautiful masterpiece! Intriguingly, Picasso constructed it from an old ceramic jug and a child’s broken toy truck.
So if it’s all about how we value, measure, and see things, then there is no junk… there’s only treasure.
art & magic 