Stone Soup for Everyone

"What are we supposed to make with all this sh*t?!"

That was the first thought I had as my group and I gathered around our "loot". The ingredients that we had scavenged for our soup were random, inconsistent, and perhaps useless even in our daily lives. 

We had bags of blue and silver Christmas ornaments, a few small bottles of paint, empty plastic bottles, and duct tape. Our group seemed to be filled with a bit of skepticism because we did not know what to do with the materials and we did not know each other so well. The awkward politeness was ever present. The best mindset to have in such situations is to "just do it" (Nike, 1988). 

We created a somewhat unstable base that could have easily been blown away by the winds that day but we quickly secured it with my "ribbon of bubbles, or ornaments tied to a scarf. Kevin, a fellow group member then taped crushed water bottles around the center of the base. The protruding bottles, with the Kirkland label still on it, created a bursting, or explosive effects. We then continued by wrapping the object with thin craft paper and other random articles that added color and more texture. It was turning out to be a lot more interesting and creative than I had expected. Best of all, I was starting to really enjoy the Stone Soup creation process.

We continued to add, paste and hang. The final touches came when Maggie plotted a stem of fake rose and everyone dripped grey and fuchsia pink all over. The grey paint dripping over the sepia colored rose seemed to add a touch of nostalgia and the whole drip effect of the paint gave our work an organic feel.

It was then that I realized that we did not start with any conceptual ideas. Many artists seem to start on a project with some idea or concept in their minds. We, on the other hand, did not. 

But that was what made our soup so fantastic. From a pile of what I would usually call junk, we created an object, or abstract garden of torn paper, crushed bottles, bursting molecules, and flowers dripping with greys and pinks. I believe that in projects similar to Stone Soup, artists have the freedom of developing concepts after the creative process. They may not even need a conceptual idea because the whole point of the project was to create something out of whatever we had.

And the best part? It was so much fun!