Recessalation Could Bring Gratification

By Lauri Apple in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 31, 2009 2:40PM

Remember when you could just buy a six-pack of something, like Hanes underpants or Hamm's beer, use one or two of the pack, then condemn the rest to the landfill? Wasn't that fun? Almost as fun as throwing trash out of car windows. Well, those wasteful days are gone, Gatsby -- at least temporarily -- thanks to The Great Depression: Internet Edition. Now that we're all Okies and hobos, we have to save fuzzballs and weave them into hoodies, and turn our used paper plates into filters for our DSLRs instead of buy real filters, and manufacture our own anti-depressants out of those candy circus peanut nightmares. It's tough.

Luckily, many of us still have plenty of reminders of our ex-excess lying around our homes, cluttering them up and making us feel guilty. (OK, I don't, but maybe you do, so I'm using "us" to make you feel less freakish.) Why not do something artistic with these items? Through April 9, Spoke hosts Recessalation, a collaboration by the group The Foolish Toys that includes an April 1 "remembrance reception" at which you can leave items that you no longer use or need. Your stuff will be incorporated into a big sculpture (they call it a "post-decadent shrine or memorial to our excessive past") that will change shape -- kind of like the stock market, except three-dimensional and pretty.

Recessalation runs through April 9, and the the "Rememberance Reception" takes place tomorrow, April 1, 5p.m. - 8 p.m. 119 N Peoria, Unit 3D