Glass Ruminations Cont'd

Another important thing about the glass that I forgot to mention:

There are patterns that develop when I'm collecting--certain types of glass are more common than others; certain spots on the street are more likely to accumulate glass (the areas where the sidewalk meets the street, for instance, or where the presence of a telephone pole causes a mild ditch--I know exactly where to look now); certain streets are rife with glass shards (and other refuse), while others have not a spec. This is a very important aspect of this whole thing for me--noticing these things, however passively, because they really say something. The more glass you are likely to find in a place, the more likely it is that that place doesn't receive much attention from whatever power is behind the cleaning up of glass and trash and the maintenance of basic infrastructural damage control--the more likely it is that that place will be regarded as "dangerous" by certain people, the more likely it is that some people will avoid that place, despite the fact that plenty of other people live and work there with their families, that children happily ride their bikes there, that the ice cream truck comes around on hot days when the glass shines brightest. And I'm just talking about Waltham Massachusettes here! Imagine what the glass has to say in other places!

I think this is a huge part of why the prospect of making something out of this glass is so psychologically overwhelming to me. It's part of something much bigger than me and what I experiment with in my studio. I feel like it's my job to honor these things that I'm finding, to adequately convey the narrative, the significance, the real meaning, the reason why I feel compelled to stop and pick these things up in the first place. But I don't know how to do that--I don't know what I can make that is going to get other people to see what I see, or at least to acknowledge and appreciate that I see what I see. I don't know how to make something that is that important, or at least that conveys the importance that I find in these seemingly minuscule, ignorable things. I don't even know if that's what I should be trying to do--is it even good enough just to get people to look at something I made and hope it made them think about something? What effect does any of that ultimately have? It just seems kind of pointless sometimes...I like to think though that if I can make something that makes even just one person think (and maybe even do something), that it's totally worth it. Maybe that's just my naivete...I prefer to consider it idealism (much more distinguished)