Sensible Hoarding for a New Century

On exhibit in the Glass Display Cases from June 3rd thru June 28th.

Artistic assemblages of randomly collected, ordinary objects by an artist who wishes to be known as "Phineas K. Foole." His mantra in Latin, Parvum congregandi inordinationem ad sensibilia congregandi, translates to "small hoarding disorder toward sensible hoarding."

"You are probably a tinkerer if you are a sensible hoarder.  Hoarding seems to have a negative connotation so that we like to consider ourselves ‘collectors’, or ‘preservationists’.  I like to think of it as simply being prepared.

"Being prepared, is the time honored tradition of the boy scouts and the tinker.  I consider it a necessary attribute of the tinker ilk.  Boy scouts may use it in other ways.  

"Think of a tinkerer as an inventor of not quite useful stuff–yet.  We start out our lives breaking things, or at least disassembling things until they aren’t re-build-able, then we magically transform (in a cocoon) as we grow into fixing things that more ’sensible’ people would throw away.  We are a special classification of artisan–at least we say so amongst ourselves. We often take trash from ‘sensible’ people, and turn it into treasure.  Magical right?

"We do like ‘sensible’ people.  We don’t necessarily understand them, but who doesn’t recognize and respect a natural tinker resource.  We even encourage the concept of decluttering your life, often giving books on tidying up (that we have graciously received) to folks who have a cleanliness burden and a sensible reputation to uphold.  We don’t even need to ask who they are, they seem to be very proud of the things they have gotten rid of that day, hour, or week, and all we have to do is listen.  

"If we know they have Class A clutter, we have even been known to volunteer to haul it away for them.  Even if we can’t use it now, we will later, and we all know that this will be a boon to tinkerers everywhere when we pass from this world.  The tiny smugness on their part is not too much of a burden for the sensible ‘hoarder’ to bear.  We can’t be blamed if they simply don’t know what “good” is.  

"It is the acme of hoarding when a situation arises when I run into a unique situation that needs a unique, nay, bizarre solution.  You cradle your chin and ponder all the exciting possibilities.  Sometimes the solution leaps like a naughty monkey into your mind.  You realize that you have “just the ticket”, (if you can only figure out where you put it), but more often than not, you have a vague sense of the ‘shape’ you are in need of filling, that necessitates making multiple tours around the stacks of your ‘collections’.  Eventually a ‘shape’ fills into the gaping void, making the picture complete.  “See, I told you that this would be useful!” You shout to the unbelievers.  

"I may have said these words 6 times in my hoarding life, but three of the instances I do not currently recall.  You know, there is so much useful, needed stuff, and if not useful now, it will undoubtedly be in the future." 

--Phineas K. Foole