America Pastime 2020 - ongoing

America Pastime 2020 - ongoing
Dimensions variable
Digital photos and video, correspondence, poems, public performance, social media posts, ephemera, online auction

The heart of America Pastime is a process Druecke coined as Trashing: to look for new types of currency in the landscape. In particular the project focuses on items left over, extra, and unwanted. The project began as a search for connection and income with minimal byproduct. It continues to evolve.

AP was featured in the NYTimes 5 We Recommend. IG:@pauldruecke

Screen capture of article from New York Times with an image of brightly colored litter gathered in a pile. The image is titled Red 40 Blue 1 Yellow 6.

Attentive, hungry, humorous, grim yet buoying meditations on landscape and leftovers. In “Wasting Away, celebrated urban planner Kevin Lynch advises on the persistence of refuse, "[W]here we cannot redirect the wasting process, we must change our minds.” America Pastime sifts through litter’s complexity in search of potential.

We are delighted to annonce:
America Pastime: Field & Street
published by Ben Tinterstices Editions 2022
available at Woodland Pattern Book Center

Visit Current news for ongoing commentary on America Pastime.

Time Signatures in G is inspired by the experience of being immersed in the landscape while Trashing. Part meditation part thriller, the work pushes back against time’s philosophical bottom line. More info on Trashing at instagram.com/pauldruecke/

America Pastime continues Druecke’s artistic interest in setting up shop on the fault lines between utopia and absurdity, which appears to be shifting to a new binary: dystopia and survival.

The Early Days: A Backstory

America Pastime began as a way to establish new connections to the world in the early days of pandemic isolation. During neighborhood walks, Druecke gathers orphaned items, composes them as still-lifes, and photographs the arrangement before redirecting the same to sanctioned waste-streams.

The project tells its story through documentary photographs, personal correspondence, and poetic videos. It uses the ubiquitous leftovers of convenience-driven lifestyles as inspiration for creative inquiry into isolation, connectivity, and inhabiting our environment.

Day 26 4.28.20 Comforts #1, courtesy of Steve Burnham

The project’s commodification of digital photos sold through low-stakes online auction offers timely, lo-fi alternatives to NFT’s (though we have minted a few in anticipation of industry greening).

Certificates of Authenticity accompany online purchase.

He works on-site, using the landscape as a stage for litter’s gothic charm, designer colors, and collective abjection. Piles of decaying styrofoam, sparkling foils, grimy wrappers and shredded plastic tell ridiculously poignant stories. At times fraught and other times whimsical, the resulting images are a post-utopian field guide to the natural world.

an early journal entry on the project:
Since March 26th Druecke has been picking up other people’s trash during daily walks. Trashing, as he refers to it. Before disposing of the day’s haul, 9 to 12 lbs of garbage for one to two hours effort, Druecke arranges impromptu Still Lifes and documents them with the intent of posting to an Instagram account created for this purpose.

There is a dirty sexy sheen to refuse en route to its proper home. The contemporary color palette of wayward rubbish—most frequently salty snack packaging, soda bottles, candy wrappers, and foil sheaths for exotically-flavored cigars—seldom disappoints.

Once online, a low-stakes auction allows people to bid on the images, adding humor and expanse. A bid might be thought of as underwriting random clean up, purchasing an attractively-priced piece of art*, joining me for what feels like, in real-time, the ultimate social-distancing exercise, co-authoring a trash to treasure fairy tale, and/or simply completing the circle.