Featured Oddities

This piece is something that was given to me recently by an artist friend.

She usually works in textiles so when I saw this hanging on the wall at her shop I had no idea it was her work & at the angle I was looking at it I had no idea what it even was.

When I commented on the piece she insisted that I take it home with me.

She told me it was made many years ago when she was going through some personal issues which she had no control over & it was made totally from reclaimed pieces.

I have no idea what exactly I am going to do with it but will probably hang it in my garage somewhere because it really doesn't fit in with the perfume bottle vibe in my office.

 

Interesting piece of art.It reminds me of some of the late 50's-mid 60's work bohemian art students were doing-'Assemblage'.

 

Funky little thing. Call it Industrial and hang it in the kitchen?

 

Why not ? Tell 'em it's an early Dr. Who prop.

 

Mombassian cyberman prototype?

 

One day a few years ago, I'm going for a walk and I see a garage sale. It has lots of boxes. One of them has probably 30 of these:





The guy at the sale has written "$5" on the side of the box they're all in. I pick one up, look at it, and say to him, "They're $5 each?"

"No," he says. "It's $5 for all of them."

"I'll take 'em."

I keep looking around.

There's some wood carved angels-- the kind where you hang it from the ceiling and then pull a string on the bottom and the body goes up and down, making the wings rise and fall. There's some T-shirts with butterflies and such.

There's a box of these blue monkey-guys with huge phalluses. I'm assuming they're fertility carvings:



I ask, "How much are these?"

"10 bucks."

Sold.

(The one in these pictures is actually in my friend's flower gardens: she thinks it's hilarious.)




"What's going on here?" I ask.

Apparently, the guy used to own a local retail shop, was married to an Indonesian woman, traveled to Indonesia often, imported these kinds of things for cheap, and these things were old inventory he still had on-hand when his shop closed for good.

"You got any other stuff?" I ask.

"Yeah, there's a lot in the basement. You wanna see it?"

Of course!

He has boxes of carved bone blow guns. They look like long bone dragons, but if you take the 'tail' part off, it's a smooth metal tube that can (and does!) shoot blow darts. He has bamboo blow guns. Blow darts for all of them. Bows and strings. Boxes of hand-made arrows.

I end up buying it all.

I walk home and get my car and come back. I pay about $100 for everything.

I bring it all home, and start unpacking and showing my 'finds' to my wife and son who are sitting on the steps, in front of our house, in disbelief. I hang the shirts and angels in our tree as I'm unpacking.

After a while, a car driving by stops, and a guy gets out. He thinks I'm having a garage sale myself. I go with it.

He looks at the stuff I've unpacked and wants to buy the Tshirts and angels.

"How much?" he asks.

"$50" I say.

He buys them.

I eventually move it all into my basement and over the next few years, I sell most of it, in a variety of ways:

I sell a couple blow guns at the antique mall, but I sell 100 of them all at once on craigslist, to an artist who says he wants to use them to make a giant collage of the sun. (I asked him to text me a picture when he does, but I never heard from him.)

I sell other blowguns and darts at several of my own, actual garage sales.

The arrows are still in my basement.

This is the story of my Indonesian garage sale, and I hereby swear that all of this is true. For real.






Lemme know if you need any arrows.

 

@bercrystal , it's a dawg..

 

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@Potteryplease ....... great story !
you're blue guys are slit drums ...and the penis is the pounder !

the blowguns are outrageously nice !!!!!!!
I can only hope the darts weren't poison tipped !!
the arrows are cool as well !

 

did the carved angels , look like Wayang puppets ????

@Any Jewelry ...... ya gotta see Pottery's stuff !!

 

incense ???????

I mean, sure , it is intense too......but

 

Yep-- that's what I meant!

 

No-- they weren't Wayang puppets-- very 'general audience-ish'.

 

I never woulda guessed that! Thanks! I can't wait to tell my friend.

 

did u parse out any arrows with the bows ???

 

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1074471128/figural-carved-tribal-fertility-slit

 

Yep. I also tried shooting them, but they are apparently 'decorative' only because they don't fly straight, so are warped, etc. Still. You'd think someone would buy 800 arrows for $25 but nope.

 

https://www.ashcroftandmoore.com/auction-lot/3-wooden-indonesian-kentongan-slit-gongs_3C84EDFA5A

 

About the monkey guys:

Not long after I got all these, I have to reseed a patch of grass in our back yard, but the birds keep coming down and eating the seed. I've got all these monkey guys, so I set up 10 or so of them around the spot, to keep the birds away.

Apparently, the local squirrel doesn't like them. We watch from the window as the squirrel approached cautiously at first, then aggressively knocks one after the other over. Hilarious.

 

ummm, it's a fertility thing....so she may not wish to pound it ....too much !!!