Buy Nothing Gigantic Necklace

From Hudson, Ohio

To be exhibited at Lakeland Community College Gallery in Kirkland, Ohio at the BIG @SS @RT SHOW. July 23-September 8 2023.

Buy Nothing Hudson, Ohio Facebook Group

In summer 2022, I had just moved to Hudson, Ohio and Buy Nothing was one of my first interactions with the Hudson community. Buy Nothing groups are small communities of neighbors who give each other things that they don’t need anymore. It’s the online version of borrowing a cup of sugar and two eggs from your neighbor when you’re in the middle of baking. I remember my mother doing this very thing long before Facebook was ever thought of. So, I asked the community to donate their old and broken costume jewelry to make a gigantic necklace. The act of creating the necklace and the group donations and encouragement are all part of the final necklace itself. It’s not just the final product that’s important, but all the people that interacted with it during its making. The focus of Buy Nothing groups is on the community and the collective. I’d like to attribute authorship of this gigantic necklace to include all the people of the Hudson Buy Nothing Facebook group. This project could not have come into being without the community’s support. The memories of their mothers, their children, and their own hopes and dreams are embodied in this jewelry.

Epilogue. April 23, 2023

Artists don’t often talk about what happens to their art after it’s made. The Buy Nothing Necklace is not just about the actual physical thing that I made, but it was also about the people, the community, and the process of making it.

Artists particularly don’t like to admit that people aren’t interested in seeing their art. Or, that they made art that only a few people actually saw. Or, that they couldn’t find any place in public to show it. Why not talk about it? It’s all part of the whole process of this project. It’s more like an art experience for me, as in the experience itself is the real art and how that experience makes me think about the Big Questions, like, “What is art?,” “If you make art, and no one sees it, is it still considered art?”, “Is art simply communication, and if no one is on the receiving end, is the art a failure?”. One of my Facebook commenters said in response to my question that art is a communication to oneself. I think this is also true.

Maybe art is like trying to connect to one’s soul, and through that to the soul of the world and all of its life. Maybe it’s finding a community. Maybe it’s like coming home.

Maybe art is making pattern and variation, making something that has a meaning in a language that cannot be articulated.

Maybe art is simply solving puzzles, putting this object and that object together to make something that is a cohesive whole – that line, that shape, that color, arranging and re-arranging, until you get something that is pleasing, that connects, that vibrates on a certain plane and says, “I am done. This is how I should be. I am complete, now.”

If I’m not really certain on what art is, I am certain on what art isn’t or what art shouldn’t be. Art shouldn’t be a commodity. Art is more than the value of its composite materials, the value of the gold it was made from, or the value of the dollar. It isn’t something to be bought and stored in a vault for future monetary appreciation. When you do that to art, you are making that art into a commodity. It kills off a little part of the soul of that artwork.

So, I made a very large Buy Nothing Necklace from hundreds of pieces of donated costume jewelry from the Hudson Buy Nothing Facebook group. Western Reserve Academy donated the big board for me to glue on all the jewelry. This project could not have come into being without the community’s support. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed.

I was able to show the necklace virtually, to post a photo of it in the Buy Nothing Hudson group and thank everyone for their donations and words of support. I thought maybe I should try to show the necklace in the real world. Unfortunately, it was too big for the library to accept for showing in its gallery, and the one little coffee shop I called did not welcome (probably rightly) a gigantic four-foot tall by three-foot wide necklace taking up its floor space. I must admit I was much too intimidated and discouraged to ask anyone else. I might have cried, just a little bit. However, one of my friends came up with the idea of showing the necklace outside my house on our Hudson Buy Nothing group’s annual gifting day (gifting day is like a garage sale but you don’t have to pay for anything). Gifting Day also happened to be Earth Day! Reduce, reuse, recycle. Regift. Turn garbage into art. But, I didn’t have anything to give away. What could I give away on Buy Nothing gift day? I set out a basket of origami cranes that I made, so that I could have something to give away, and so that people could take a little souvenir home with them. 

On Earth Day, it rained. It rained and the wind blew the rain and made most of my front porch soaking wet. The Big Necklace wasn’t waterproof. I hadn’t varnished the board. I hadn’t sealed anything. So, the Big Necklace got a shortened showing and a few kind souls, mostly my friends and neighbors, braved the rain to come see it. Earth Day is over, and now it’s time to put the Big Necklace away.

What do you do with a 20-pound, four-foot high by three-foot wide necklace? It’s lucky for me that I made a really pretty piece of art, something that gives me pleasure to look at. I’m lucky my home is big enough to fit an artwork that big. Since I’m thinking of how lucky I am, I’m also very lucky to have made new friends through the process of making this necklace. Friends are the best part. So, I’m happy and I’m grateful. I have someplace to put it. I’ll be sure next time to think about the limitations of making art so big, and the limitations of where I can keep it. I don’t want to put it in a storage unit, and I don’t want to have to rent warehouse space. I certainly don’t want to throw it away. I don’t think anybody else wants it, so size and beauty are going to have to be real considerations with any future art I make. Because if I don’t want to keep it in my house, I’m going to have to throw it away, and I won’t want to keep it in my house if it makes me sad or angry or anxious or upset. Luckily for me, the Big Necklace isn’t any of these things. When I look at it, I feel tranquil and happy. Peaceful. I like that it’s very shiny.

And, coincidentally, it matches my sofa.

Post Script. April 24, 2023

I posted the story of the Buy Nothing Necklace in my Facebook artists groups. It just happened that Mary Urbas, the curator of the Gallery at the Lakeland Community College in Kirkland Ohio, saw my big necklace and wanted to put it in her show of gigantic, oversized art. Serendipity, we both said. The show is called THE BIG @SS @RT SHOW and runs from July 23-September 8 2023.