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Ask an Olympia Dumpster Diver: Flestering

Ruby Re-Usable Posted on by

ruby-re-usable-pic-of-dumpster-in-the-alley.jpg

 From our e-mail bag box:

Hi Ruby!

For the purposes of ODD and your blog I am now considering myself Bil “the Flesterer” Fleming rather than Landfill Bil.  The word comes from this Pittsburgh Artist and his website and work.   Bil

Ruby responds:  Dearest Bil “the Flesterer” Fleming, Thank you for sending us an interesting link to share with our fellow dumpster divers!  Of particular note is this thoughtful art review from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, describing aforementioned artist Bob Johnson’s river cubes:  this detritus of industrial consumer society [is arranged] in ways that suspend between happenstance and formal elegance (read entire review HERE).

The word “flester,” though, is troubling me.  I can not find a definition of it outside of Johnson’s own site, which leads me to the conclusion that he invented the term, which of course, is fascinating in its own right.  But flester sounds too much like “fester” to me, and flesterer does not exactly roll off the tongue.  Also, the word is obviously obtuse and does not add to our understanding of your work.  So we will refer to you as Bil “the Flesterer” Fleming if you insist, but please note that the lack of poetry and clarity in this new moniker, coupled with the unconventional “Bil with one L,” is causing us some discomfort.  Gentle Readers, what do you think of the word flester?  love, etc Ruby

ps for more pics of painted dumpsters, check out Ruby’s flickr

Comments

Ask an Olympia Dumpster Diver: Flestering — 3 Comments

  2. ps
    in case you did NOT follow the link provided in the post, here is the official Bob Johnson/River Cubes definition of flesters:

    A word derived from the memory of a cartoon,ª flesters are discarded things, “found objects,” any “thing” at all that we presume to be in some way isolated from its context… Fragments of formerly functional contrivances, flesters are touted as universally useful objects. By making manifest symbolic, intellectual, and social dimensions of discarded things, flestering encourages promiscuous and proliferative notions of function & utility. Exhibit A (PDF) The theory of flesters affirms flestering as a practice closely related to bricolage…

    Personally, I prefer Bricolage Bil or Bil the Bricolager Fleming or “Found it along the freeway Fleming” or suggestions??

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