On Your List

It started at a Whole Foods self check out. I spotted the handwritten list in the trash can out of the corner of my eye: Pork Chops, Broccoli, Wine, F Fries, Veggie Burger, Choc Croissants... something compelled me to pick it up, stuff it in my purse and take it home. Unsure what to do with it now, I stuck it on the side of my fridge where I would glance at it from time to time, thinking about the person who wrote those words. I always imagined an older bachelor type, eating his favorite foods alone. But a visitor to my home once speculated, no this was for a date night, and the chocolate croissants an optimistic thought for the morning. Another said, no this was a meal for a child returning from college for the weekend with his new girlfriend (she’s a vegetarian).

I began scanning empty shopping carts for forgotten lists and added them to my refrigerator. They felt so intimate, so human, so relatable. For example, the list with: “Bok Choy?” I mean, does anyone buy bok choy and not question the purchase?

When we moved last summer I carefully took down the refrigerator clutter of announcements, reminders, photos and strangers’ shopping lists. My small collection moved with us to our new home in Santa Rosa. It was in this transition that I knew I needed more lists. I took a shoe box, wrote a message (“Done with your list? Put it here!”) and left it near the checkout at our local grocery store. Over the next few months I collected the lists seen in this exhibit.

Lifting any object out of it’s original designation and repurposing it within an artistic context falls into the realm of found art. These lists are unrefined and unimportant, but it is in that rawness that they become so very intriguing. Each list, a story.