Assemblage

I’ve been collecting keys since 2021. Friends and family started giving me more and the collection grew. When I lived in Richmond I would get them from ScrapRVA, a creative reuse center that sells donated collected materials from art supplies to bottle caps for cheap. Twelve keys are from a garage sale I accidentally came upon on my study abroad in Florence Italy.

After I moved for grad school I heard from a coworker the Upcycle Creative Reuse Center exists and has keys. From there I got at least a hundred more and another 5 from friends this semester

In Progress Images:

1: Search for and gather keys and other little metal objects, tell people what you're looking for so people can help you gather and so you can have good company when scavenging

2: Clean keys and found objects

3: String the keys from a single string running along the ceiling

Findings:

• DON'T use command hooks for suspending strings of keys

(they will fall in the middle of the night and create a loud, jingling ruckus that can cause weird dreams involving jingling noises)

• I put the keys in cleaning solution, let them sit too long, and some rusted

(I had to clean them again)

• I was going to add metal sewing machine parts, gears, and other metal parts I found but those rusted the most

• I’m pleased with how I can keep adding to this and how the outline of shapes are formed by the string

Application In The Classroom:

• It would be best to choose other objects to scavenge that are preferably not metal for students (like leaves or plastic bottle caps). This could help avoid issues with rust and I should preface before doing an assemblage project that nobody is allowed to touch anything rusty or sharp. In undergrad there was a famous list of banned items to use in classwork that was printed out with our syllabae. This list included many things that can smell and not age well like dead fish and it was funny because you knew there was a story behind each banned item. So for teaching assemblage I would want to get ahead of the curve and state those rules ahead of time and create enough guidelines with materials for the younger kids that could avoid hazardous objects all together.

• I would want to collect found objects like bottle caps sorted by type and cardboard boxes and other recycled materials I find to have ready for students to make assemblage projects out of

• Having an assemblage project at the end of the year may work best so kids could collect bottle caps and tabs and such over the course of a year as a team building exercise. Maybe I could even have different classes compete to fill up jars with (cleaned and dried) bottle caps or establish different teams within one class

• This project would probably be best to have when it's warm and kids can explore for materials outside. I believe I would need a rule about no collecting tree nuts from the ground in case of food allergies