On Jan 09, 1996 09:28:12, 'Jenni Rodda <[log in to unmask]>' wrote:


>My great-grandfather took
>some of the snow that had piled up outside his home, melted
>it down, and sealed it in a bottle (I think he used parrafin
>and foil), labelling it as carefully as if it were a museum
>object.  The bottle still exists; it is still sealed rather
>well, but fully half of the quart of snowmelt originally
>contained there has evaporated away.  That it took more than
>a century to lose half the volume of the snowmelt seems
>remarkable to me.

Jenni's story reminded me of a terrible storm we had in Binghamton way back
in the early mid 1960s.  Well, it may not have been so terrible, because
they didn't cancel classes.  A friend of mine was taking a course in Modern
Art; they were studying Dada that week, and the instructor has assigned
each student a task to bring in an objet trouvee.  My friend, who never
seemed to do much work, remembered the assignment at the last moment, on
the way to class.  Hastily she picked up a mound of snow, fashioned it into
two hefty snow-balls (so much for objets trouvees) and laid them on the
table with all the other student items.  At the end of the class -- at show
and tell time -- all that remained was a puddle. Was this one of the first
pieces of self-destructive art?  It is art to tell, but we do know that
from the pessimistic 60s, the movement that created self destructive
neo-dada objects certainly began to snow-ball.
--

Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont N.Y. 10538
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