when spirits are hiding between old records...

i discovered the above drawing in a box that arrived in the mail yesterday. it was stuffed between two 78's as packing material. i bought a lot of 10 discs off ebay, most of which were terrible, but the packing job was an amazing bit of folk art, homespun sculptural ingenuity. it looked as if this stack came right out of a time machine - from the 20's into a shipping box.

some of the other things found between discs: some 10" square remnants of a 1927 sunday comics section (unfortunately it was torn in a way that no strip was complete), some 10" square remnants of some kind of paper laundry bag - a nice shade of blue and definitely also 1920's, and finally a number of 10" squares cut from a box of some sort, with a few of the remnants written or drawn on - including the masterpiece pictured - the highlight of the free stuff; particularly as it was the only thing not torn apart and fragmented. i am guessing it was done after everything was torn apart, but before the records were stuffed into a closet for 80 years.

the drawing brings up all sorts of associations from dubuffet and picasso, to early american indian drawings. note also the strange hans arp sculpture (or butterfly) flying in the air... sadly, the drawing was the best part of the contents, as the records themselves were HAMMERED and stinky...