The way I remember it, my dear long-time friend, Adriane Herman, needed a ride to a church in the suburbs of Kansas City. She had taken pictures of people throwing things into a landfill in Maine in the past and there was certain body language that indicated a celebration or a sense of relief as the throwers let the trash fly.
Adriane was going to meet Dylan Mortimer at the church and I like Dylan, and I like Adriane, so that counterbalanced my dislike for church. Unlike the church I grew up in, The Reach in Prairie Village did not have anyone wearing their “Sunday Finest”, nor preaching hellfire and brimstone. We had a good experience, met some nice people, and by the second or third Sunday at The Reach, Adriane had engaged some parishioners after the morning service and asked them if they were interested in throwing anything away, either physically or symbolically, or both, and she found some takers. She also found some others who were game for shouting encouragement to the Freeing Throwers.
The first guy to step up to the dumpster was Mark, who tossed his iphone into the dumpster. Mark was pretty enthusiastic about the process and said he spent too much time on his smartphone, time that could be better spent engaging his wife and child face to face. I liked Mark's attitude. We photographed Mark as his dumpster-bound white iphone flew through the air with red bricks in the background. We shot a couple more people throwing stuff away and then Adriane asked me to toss a fast food sandwich container into the dumpster. She had pulled the container from a trash can inside the church, remembering something I had said about wanting to cut back on fast food. I gave it a nice over-the-shoulder high-arching flip, leading me to notice a thing or two about my waistline upon seeing this photograph.
– Mo Dickens
After breaking a long-standing fast food habit (the woman in the drive-thru window at Wendy's once commented on Mo's haircut before his wife did), surrendering his Coca Cola credentials to be a card-carrying water quaffer, and confining his sugar intake to Sacred Sundays at McClains Bakery, Mo has lost over thirty pounds and taken up residence three belt holes to the left. Mo reports: "Since losing the weight I feel so much better at the end of a 12 hour First Friday [gallery opening] shift. A year ago I could barely walk with aching feet at the end of First Fridays." Congratulations Mo and thanks for letting us bear witness.
Get one of Mo's award-winning tours of the Belger Art Collection in Kansas City and benefit from the boost in his standing story-telling stamina (you might want to bring arch support because Mo's got a lot of knowledge about those artists...).
A little encouragement goes a long way. This "Off-Putting" project is about capturing and amplifying the energy embedded in gestures of release, and the importance of role-modeling, vulnerability and encouragement. Thanks to my collaborators at Reach in the Village, where the congregation is chock full of cheerleaders both amateur and professional!
Every day I see so many people, including me, sitting next to each other or across from each other and everyone is looking at their phone. So many times my 9-year-old son wants my attention or asks me to play with him, or wants to tell me about his day, and I cannot put down the phone to give him my full attention. So many times my wife, René, wants to share about her day or ask about mine, and I don't don't put down the phone to give her my full attention. It's so habit-forming and addicting to always be entertained and stimulated. But by what?!
What am I saying NO to when I say YES to surfing the phone throughout the day? The first step is to THROW AWAY the phone and REPLACE it with true intimacy with the people I care most about. It would be like having bags of gold around you, but still rifling through the trash to get something to eat. It's ludicrous, yet I do it every day.
This gesture was a symbol to remind me of what's important and what I want to be intentional about. It is so crazy that I trade in this false intimacy of seeing what my Facebook friends are up to for real intimacy with my wife and son. Is it still a struggle, yes. But since I threw that phone in the dumpster, I am committed to trying to keep first things first, and not let my phone cheat me of the intimacy with my wife and son I so desperately want. I am done letting the phone crowd the important relationships out of my life. INTENTIONALITY IS THE KEY!
– Mark Mansingh
Wouldn’t we all love to throw all our bills away? Of course we would. But my gesture of throwing a bill away was about more than just relieving debt. Much of the debt we have, if we have any, is our own doing. I made the choices to buy the things I have bought, attend the schools I did, etc. I even chose to be married and to have children. I am responsible for the choices I make.
But I threw away a medical bill and here’s where it gets interesting. Even medical bills can be the result of our poor choices or mistakes ... sometimes. Then there are those other bills. Things we are billed for that are no result of choices we made, good or bad. I was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a respiratory disease that has required much medical attention since I was a small child. I did not choose to have this disease. These bills are not a result of a lack of compliance on my part. Quite the opposite - they are a result of my compliance.
All that said, I realize I am steeped in privilege. In many if not most places in the world, fighting Cystic Fibrosis is not an option. I would have died as a child. I am not owed anything. But how do we frame the conversation of healthcare in a privileged country? How can there be more equality and balance, not just in our privileged country, but in the whole world? How can we move towards adequate healthcare, so everyone has the chance to fight diseases as I have?
I wish I had more answers. But all the recent unrest over the issue is to me a step in the right direction. I throw away my bill, not to absolve me of responsibility, but as a way of saying I want more. More for people like me, and people in a worse situation who can’t get any healthcare at all. I’m not escaping the bill (you can pay these online now...). But I want to do my small part in searching for more.
– Dylan Mortimer
So I found this box of selected baby clothes that I had held onto for 25 to 30 years. They were a few of my favorites that I had tucked away. I put the box in the back of my car intending to drop it off at the Goodwill or Red Racks. Instead I just left them there and drove them around for a month or two.
It was a bit like having the two little boys that my sons had been secured in the back seat. When the opportunity arose to give these away to Mark and René who were expecting their first child (a boy!), I was pleased. It felt much more rewarding to place these items that held such meaning to me into the hands of René rather than to send them off into the greater anonymous world.
--Susan Smith
I was floored. I did not expect such generosity and kindness from a total stranger. It was beautiful to see her heart in the gift she was giving away. Each piece of clothing represented a memory of her son. I was glad I got to hear a little bit about him and see a photo. It is cool to think that my son will share a connection with him.
– René Mansingh
I grew up really poor, and my mom was a hoarder. So I admit I always think: ‘I may need this.’ I would rather have something I don’t need that I may need some day than have to go out and buy it. I got used to and comfortable with chaos and junk around me, and it reflected my chaotic life. I never got rid of all my ex-wife’s wedding pictures and giant picture wedding registry. My current wife never said anything, but that had to be frustrating and hurtful to her. She finally broke down in front of me and told me this home didn’t feel like her home. It was so cluttered with past junk that it was not a home she could make her own very easily, if at all.
-Mark Mansingh
Everything about the day was overwhelming. I expected a small handful of people to show up that Saturday morning — 5 or 6 maybe. Surely not the 20+ people who paraded into our yard armed with rakes and shovels and work gloves. At first, I didn't want them to come into the garage. It was too messy, too chaotic, too dirty. It was full of junk and cobwebs and mouse poop and icky stuff.
They didn't wait for instructions, but immediately started chucking things into the dumpster, sweeping, sorting, stacking. After a while, our garage was refreshingly emptier and the dumpster was halfway full. I didn't hesitate when it was time to move on to the icky, dirty basement.
It was scary letting people see those “icky” parts of our home, our life. But there was something immensely freeing too — like admitting that we needed help and accepting that help. We could not have done this on our own. I was overwhelmed by their generosity and support. I felt a unique bond with the people helping us.
-René Mansingh
Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.
– Daphne Rose Kingma
The “death” of my car in the left lane on I-35 on October 3, 2014 followed and paled in comparison with a rapid fire string of losses that led me to take a leave of absence from my job in Maine and utilize my artwork as a shock absorber. A few months before, a new body of work was born when I found myself at a recycling center without the recycling I had driven there to drop off. Having had to make the impossible decision to “let go” of my beloved dog two days before, I was disoriented and saw with red raw eyes the piles of materials that were being discarded and arranged by bulldozer into skyward-reaching mountains of shards onto which people were constantly tossing more detritus. Raising my phone camera, I began chronicling the ease, grace and space evident when people jettison things. Capturing people in the sometimes awkward but often surprisingly graceful poses struck in moments of release, as well as the objects as they flew through the air was a welcome distraction from grief. This form of photographic skeet shooting may transmit infectious energy that could help others let go, or even avoid acquiring things that consume physical and psychological space.
By then three months into a project provisionally called “Goods Riddance,” I instinctively asked the mechanic at the garage to photograph me shutting the doors and trunk for the last time, documenting my release of a car given to me by a deceased family member, and foolhardy and expensive to haul across the country three weeks before, given its condition. I had a hard time letting it go mainly due to all the happy memories I had of being in that car with my beloved dog, Browser. Thus began a period of seven months during which I relied on walking, biking, public transportation, and copious rides from friends and strangers. I could hardly have imagined that this period would culminate in an Overland Park couple – whom I first met while visiting a church where an artist I admire ministers – loaning me two different cars in seeming gratitude for what my project instigated in their lives.
Several of the lettings go documented in these photographs resulted from my asking for and receiving rides from friends and strangers. I began investigating Reach in the Village church after artist / pastor / teacher / parent / bill tosser, Dylan Mortimer, arranged for me and my new dog to get a ride to a Church-hosted artist’s talk one slushy Friday evening. Susan White gave me a ride home a different night, and when I told her about my project, she pointed to the box of baby clothes on her back seat that she hadn’t managed to drop off at Goodwill just yet, craving a more personal exchange.
What started out as a favor from Mo Dickens of a ride to our mutual friend, Dylan’s church, became a tradition spanning thirteen Sundays that saw us both tearing up and passing back and forth the hanky visible in Mo’s pocket in this photo documenting how baggy his pants got after three months of long dog walks after church, eating stir fries with kale rather than fast food...
...and peeling oranges and finding his healthy eating choices at a snack table being mimicked by inner city youth learning to use a pottery wheel...
Inspirationally, after thirty years without exercise and surviving on fast food, pastries, and "soft" drinks, Mo has begun juicing and doing push-ups every night before bed. Given what an extraordinarily kind human he is, I consider the possible contribution to extending his life, if even by a few minutes, the greatest contribution to humanity my art practice will likely ever make.
Many of us have conscious or unconscious blocks against asking for help that likely requires little effort for someone else, and may actually be quite helpful rather than burdensome for another person to provide. We role model for one another, so showing vulnerability and acknowledging needs we have but can’t meet ourselves can be profoundly permission giving to others. The topic of the first sermon Mo and I heard? Vulnerability. The last? Why, “throwing things” to God, of course.
- Adriane Herman
Thanks in particular to the Mansingh family, for welcoming me and Mo so effusively to Sunday services and saving us pew space, for inviting us to their home to witness the great dumpster-ganza as well as René's 30th Birthday luau...
...and for loaning me a badass car for two months and putting me on their insurance (who does that?!).
And profuse thanks to Dylan Mortimer, Pastor at Reach, and old friend. Thanks for getting me south of Loose Park on so many Sundays and inspiring so many. ("Amen Bitches")