Drew S: Are we supposed to be talking individually about what we have, or together? Cause we both were collectors before amplifying our collection powers.

Zoe: Either way. (laughing) How much time do you devote to your collections?

DS: Oh, it’s great fun. It’s definitely a major pastime.

DS: I feel like Danny and I like to collect things in an artifact kind of way. The collection itself brings a certain light or liveliness or like a feel; it captures a spirit of a time gone by. It’s not like I'm going crazy out there stapling with my many staplers. It feels good to be surrounded by these items. For me collecting is also about creating the integrity of a whole scene. 

Danny L: I just really enjoy creating an ambiance of something as a whole. That's what's been so fun about having the Belair. It can immediately bring somebody back to a very specific point in their childhood. It’s a ‘57 so people are like Oh my god! I remember sneaking into drive-ins with five people in the trunk!

DS: It’s great. Little ladies in their 90s talking about necking in the back seat. They get misty eyed.

Z: Describe your collections.

DS: The one that we are building now is vintage staplers. Often they have like a business name on them and nice colored metal. Green, heavy or like gray, really nice gray. My intrigue with office supplies is definitely associated with my dad, sitting at his desk when I was a young person and getting to have an old checkbook to write in and an old letter opener and an old stapler. Every time I go through that stuff at the flea or a garage sale it definitely takes me back to that place, but I also just like the weight and the construction of all those things. They definitely have to be from a certain era-like we are not collecting current staplers. There is a certain set of decades that we are attracted to—

DL: What business looked like then; what an office looked like then. Slightly museum-y but also just bringing you back to a time when there was more of a sense of integrity...

DS: In some ways…

It’s really different than some of the other collections we have…like vintage bar-wear and Pyrex and plate-wear. All that stuff, for Danny, is very much about reuniting a set. 

DL: I LOVE SETS. And, I love finding them one piece at a time. I've reunited sets over 15 years. This is maybe a little bit of a hoarder mentality, but, if I see something I want and it is part of a set, I have to buy the whole set because these items lived together. 

DS: (Laughing) You can't break them up!

DL: It can’t be on my conscience...like this luggage set I got recently. It’s a really nice turquoise suitcase with a cosmetic case. I am never going to use the cosmetic case, but these two pieces have a relationship!

Z: What about the uniforms?

DL: Those collections are pretty big, but we are not actively buying those things as much. It’s cheerleading uniforms—there's probably around forty of them—aerobics outfits and boy scouts uniforms—from the 40s through the 80s.

DS: They are all labeled in apple boxes with hot pink duct tape that say “cheerleading tops” or “cheerleading bottoms” or "scout neckerchiefs" or"scout belts."

DL: It’s a real mess when you have a party because you just bring it all out and throw it all around. The purpose of those is dress-up costume-ry. Once people have had a few drinks, it gets amazing. You can put someone in a thong leotard who would not come in a thong leotard, you know?

DS: The scouting stuff you wouldn’t necessarily throw into a dance party. It’s been super fun for Halloween or whatever to have an instant troop of fifteen scouts. It’s kind of funny and of course the queer factor with that is good, too. 

It’s my dream to have an expedition. Put on our scout attire and be just a bunch of queerdos walking to the beach with our canteens and our knapsacks and our mess kits. 

Z: Do you have any thoughts on collecting something affiliated with such a notoriously anti-queer organization?

Z: Do you have any thoughts on collecting something affiliated with such a notoriously anti-queer organization?

DS: Indeed. They do have a troubling record with being queer accepting. In fact, on time we shopped at the scout shop in Marin, where they sell all the neat-o badges and pins, and the lady was pretty miffed that we weren’t scouts. We looked very gay. She knew, but couldn’t turn us away since it is a retail shop. She wouldn’t let us buy certain things—and she gave us this lecture that included, well I’m sure you will use these in good reverence.

Being socialized female, but being a transgender identified kid, it was maddening that my only choice was the girl scouts, heck no! They don’t do anything cool. At least that’s how I felt at the time.

DL: We actually have some really amazing pieces. When we entered our vintage boy scout’s stuff in the county fair, someone saw it who was a scout in the 60s. He was feeling like it was time to part with his scouting stuff. So, he tracked us down. He gave us some really nice pieces—like really nice rings…heavy wool uniforms, his pocket-knife, all his awards. The ring is really gorgeous.

Z: What is vintage bar-wear?

DS and DL: Swizzle sticks, shakers, cocktail glasses, coasters, sweat bands-that go on your cup, reamers, bottle openers, cocktail napkins with jokes on them …

DL: I have a weakness for ashtrays—I am so anti-smoking and he is always like you cannot bring home another ashtray…

DS: (Riled up) I've never said that about ashtrays! I love ashtrays. But...Salt ‘n pepper shakers! I've tried to put the kibosh on salt ‘n pepper shakers… and slowly, one at a time Danny is like, well what’s another one?

DL: Listen, I don’t have a thing for salt n' pepper shakers but if you find a salt n' pepper shaker that matches a design of something else you have, you kind of feel like you have to get it.

DS: Drinking culture, smoking culture is definitely a fondness of ours. My very first collection as a small person was bottle caps, beer bottle caps. I still have it. My sisters would go to Europe and come back with all these unusual bottle caps from like Germany. I love the sound of them all clinking together. I love the smell of them.

Z: (laughing) Is everything displayed how you want it displayed?

DS: Things are displayed nicely. Our house lends itself well to little shelves dedicated to a certain theme. I mean there's currently a shelf dedicated to Danny's bouncy ball collection; there’s one dedicated to a few select scout items; there’s collectable vintage first aid items; there’s one that's just weird 80s toys and in the upstairs, all the 80s TV trays. I mean things are on display as decoration and when people come over they often say, " feels a little bit like a museum," and then when kids come over we are like, "Mmmmm. (angry voice) Don't play with my collections!"

DS: The kitchen is absurd, though. Every cupboard has enough plates and glassware and pots and pans to host an army. 

DL: We have place settings for like twenty-something.

DS: And we don’t entertain that often. We had to stop collecting certain things for the kitchen because we ran out of room. But, they do get used. And the point is to enjoy them. We don’t actually cook on a separate set of new things. We cook and use the vintage colanders, the pans, the cocktail glasses, the plates. Everything. There is way more than we actually need. In the stack of Pyrex we probably use like two bowls out of the forty. 

Z: Where else do you look for stuff besides the flea?

DL: Actually the best was in Florida.

DS: Oh yeah, that was really good. 

DL: We were driving around a fair amount. It was just thrift stores along...I mean they were everywhere. I thought they wouldn’t be that good because people didn’t retire in Florida, they retire to Florida. But, it was phenomenal. When we flew back we had to buy a couple extra suitcases. And we were traveling with some weird items...

DS: We traveled with a toaster-oven that time.

DL: But, a good vintage toaster oven is hard to find!

Z: Are there any things you've seen become collectable that you are really astonished by?

DS: I feel like people often collect what they remember from their youth, or what they grew up with, and then later they kind of revisit and it. It takes them back. Maybe they hit their 40s or 50s and have extra money and then they start kind of looking at these things that bring them back to their childhood. We are both very turned off by new and consumer stuff and how much money can be wasted. Buying used has this element of not contributing to the production of new things. 

Z: I get overwhelmed by stuff. I need to be able to move in one day. 

DS: I totally understand that pull and desire. I have that too and am torn all the time about the idea of having nothing because the few times I've had nothing…it was really freeing.

DL: It’s funny. Where we are at right now with so much upheaval and grief and change in our lives…we are both feeling weighed down by some of the stuff we have. Just wanting to purge. And I feel less attachment to a lot of it than I used to.

DS: I'm gonna spend the next three weeks going through my sister's house and yard-saling all that stuff and I don’t have any intention of bringing anything home-mostly cause I don’t really want anything more, but I know there are going to be things that have emotional attachment. It’s really intense. You don’t take any of that stuff with you when you go and it is a burden for somebody else. So it does feel really good to be able to pass it on to somebody who is going to enjoy it while you are alive. There is much more pleasure there.

Z: Can you tell me about your collections?

E: I mostly collect things that I think would be useful. So I...no, that's not really true. I collect weird things, too. I have five sets of boxing gloves. 

Z: Where do you get boxing gloves?

E: Garage sales. Most of my stuff is from garage sales, or Bargain Barn. I've been going to garage sales since high school. I have little stuffed animals. One of these is a stuffed animal from when I was small and the rest of them are other people's stuffed animals. There's this one Teddy Bear that I found that I just thought looked so sad. 

Z: Did you get it cause you thought they it sad?

E: (laughing) Yeah! This Teddy Bear is my favorite old pair of pants that disintegrated. 

Z: You made your pants into a Teddy Bear?

E Yeah. (laughing)

Z: Do your bears have relationships to one another?

E: Yeah. They get separated sometimes when things get rearranged in my room and then if feels a lot better when I put them all back together.

I also collect tiny instruments because I’m too intimidated to play big instruments. 

Z: Tiny instruments?

E: Tiny instruments...I have a tiny piano, and I have my little sister's old tiny guitar and I have a tiny Banjo. I have all these little succulent bits.

(Elinor points towards a corner of her attic filled with plants.)

They are mostly parts of other succulents. Sometimes some of them die and I don’t really understand why because I treat them all the same, and the rest of them are doing great. 

Z: Are these your prints here? 

E: Yeah.

Z: I'm noticing that your teddy bear collection features in this print. Can you tell me about that?

E: I started incorporating them into my drawing and then they ended up in my senior show flyer. The creatures are hanging out in this star composite world and they decide to go outside. So they take a fern vessel to a planey island where teeth grow on trees. The etching I'm working on right now is the animals on the fern vessel sailing on the star ocean, and coming upon the plant island. It’s fun plant research. A third of the plants are made up, and another third I'm looking up online, and the last third are my own plants. 

Z: Do you consciously collect things? Is it something you know you're doing when you are doing it?

E: I have four siblings and our older cousins would bring us all their old clothes and we'd get to sift through them and its like a whole new wardrobe but its all like really weird old stuff and I love that. Also, when I was little my mom had a button collection ,and we'd color sort it, and organize it, and make towers out of all of them, and then throw them all back in the box.

One thing that I collect—that people normally think is a little bit obsessive when they find out—is I've been handwriting out all of the text messages that I get since I got a phone in tenth grade. The backs of all my sketchbooks are every text message, and time, and date, and who sent them, and if there are picture messages I draw all the pictures. Sometimes, people will ask if they can look through them, and they'll get really excited when they find themselves. Sometimes, it’s weird, cause I'll write down the really personal ones and be like, Shit, should I not let people read my sketchbook?

Z: Do you go back and look through them yourself?

E: I used to a lot more before I did as much texting. When I didn’t text very much, I'd only write down the cute ones, the good ones. It would be like a couple dozen...it would be parts of pages and not whole pages covered in text messages. Now, I can’t decide if I should write down a really regular, Whatsup? or I'm coming.

Z: If you were given limitless resources and space how would you display your collections?

E: In shelves and boxes. I would like to have them all visible. I would like to have them all in one space. But, I um, I'd like to have more plants and I'd like to have more animals. I'd like to be able to look at everything. I'd like a lot more shelves. 

Z: Is collecting a solitary or a social thing for you?

E: It can be both. The garage sale thing—my friend Michelle that used to live here—that’s what we did every single weekend. Adamantly. She'd buy like really practical things. She'd mostly buy tools and I'd go to garage sales and be like, "I will take all of your bouncy balls and all of your gel pens."

Z: Do you have a bouncy ball collection?

E: I do, but I can't find it! I used to collect absurd amounts of... do you know those water delivery services? They came with foil caps. I probably had hundreds or thousands of those foil caps. They were malleable and I always thought I'd be able to use them. They're still in my parents’ attic. I had hundreds and hundreds of glass bottles on all the top shelves in my room, also. When I moved out my parents were like you have to get rid of these, so we just filled up the recycling…over three weeks.

Z: Did that make you sad?

E: Yeah. But I was like, I'm leaving, I can't take them all with me.

A: I used to collect rubber ducks. And then that’s all you get for Christmas from every family member for the next 30 years. I had 200.

I purged them in a giant art project at Mills. We filled the fountain in the middle of the Tea shop. I put all my ducks in it and just walked away. I was like Yup, not mine anymore. I have a couple bad pictures. I should have documented it more because every time I went back people would have pulled them out and put them in different arrangements. Hopefully I wont get ducks anymore. 

Z: Do you have feelings about collecting v hording?

A: Yeah. I guess I haven’t really thought about it in that sense but I've definitely had trouble deciding if I should or shouldn’t keep stuff over the years.

I mean so much of what I have, too, is not just old, but is old from my family. And you know change happens in every family but I feel like a lot of what happened in my family wasn’t my choice. I grew up with my mom who was a single mom and spent most of my time at my grandparents’ house which is a beautiful old turquoise Victorian in Oakland and I lived right around the corner from it. My mom was one of four kids. So when it came to choices about my grandmother moving and her health options and wellbeing, four people were trying to be democratic about this other person. I felt so left out of that conversation. I was like, I don’t think you can decide what's best for this person and um disagreed with a lot of the choices they made…especially moving her out of her house and leaving it empty for so long. A lot of what happened when she was moving out was me being—I was hoarding at that point, I was like put everything in boxes. It's all mine. You are just going to throw it out? No!  I have sentimental attachment to everything, so that is like, I don’t know, I tried to make it even worse what they were doing because I was like, you're doing it to me! So now, it has kind of gotten to the point where I’m picking and choosing between the things that actually have sentimental value so that I can also decide which memories and associations I’m going to keep in my space.

I collect cat whiskers. We do cat rescue and I grew up with a lot of cats so I have kind of a creepy amount. With the cat whiskers—I’m kind of collecting them with the intention of using them for something. Oh there is a cat tooth in there, too.

I like making shadow boxes and filling boxes with weird shit so I collect...plants and keys, pop tops—this originally started cause I was like, I'm going to collect enough pop tops to make a shirt out of them or something and then, by the time I had enough I was like I don’t want to do that...but I still collect them. 

Jars of stuff. I love it. Cause I collect Jars, too, so I fill em with stuff. 

I used to have like all my toys and jars and stuff on shelves but it just got so crazy looking. I like rearranging stuff and redisplaying things and, you know move different jars to the front depending on what I've been staring at forever. I got rid of a lot of bottles and jars when I moved, which I kind of regret cause now I could have covered the top of that cabinet in them. I'm sure I'll get there again.

I got rid of a lot of the plastic dinosaurs, too. My mom also has toys everywhere in her house so a lot of it was like I'm, I'm not going to keep this dinosaur, do you want it? So she has a lot of them now.

The pop-tops and the keys, they're not from my past. They are just interesting in repetition and they are kind of a raw material for me. The milk glass as well, like some of it has sentimental attachment, but in growing the collection it’s more about the kind of objects not so much each thing. But when it comes to my grandma’s old lipstick containers I'm like this is the coolest thing ever and not trash at all and it’s not about all lipstick or all old lipstick, it’s specifically the family things. 

Z: And your mother collects, too?

A: She is more of a hoarder. Lots of stuff—paper, boxes, cats—um I mean I think in a way it is very similar to mine where she likes things and she's an artist. She really appreciates the aesthetics of so many different things but her collecting is not limited by the reasonable amount of space it could take up or its function. So I honestly think that 90% of the stuff is seen probably once a year. 

Z: So do you think your relationship with collecting familial-ly speaking has more to do with your grandmother than your mother?

A: Yeah. Cause my grandma's house was packed to the gills with stuff too—there were so many generations raised in that house—but it was always organized and in its place. I'm collecting things more from the part of my life when I lived with my grandparents. I don’t really have a lot of stuff from my childhood with my mom—I lived with her up until four months ago so, you know, I'm not really nostalgic. 

Z: What does she do with the toys?

A: She just has them. Everywhere. Shelves. Bookshelves. On top of shelves. They're not in any order or anything. They are just kind of everywhere.

Katie: I also collect things. (Katie pulls out small glass tube, similar to film canister)

Z: What's that? 

K: This is my eyelashes. 

Z: How many years have you been doing this?

K: Only like a year...but I've been picking at my eyelashes purposely for a while. It’s kind of a neurosis type thing. It was Adrienne who convinced me to start saving them. 

A: I was like, Here's a jar. (Big smile)

K: I thought it was a great idea. I think I was like, I should start saving them and then she put that in my hand. I don’t save everyone that I pull out of my face, but I wish I did cause this pile would be so much bigger. I like to pull them out and then play with them. 

It was teenage years that I started. Probably sixteen.

Z: Do other people give you their eyelashes?

K: I almost don't want to contaminate it with other people's eyelashes. Though, I think one of Adrienne’s eyelashes is probably in there. 

Z: What if you find one on your face?

K: That counts. If this (vial) is around me I'll put it in. 

Z: When you find one, or pull at your eyelashes do you get excited and need to find the bin?

K: Yeah. 

A: I mean, excuse me for interrupting, but she also spends a good amount of time with the eyelashes she picks out. She's not just like Oh, eyelash and throws it in. She's like, Oh, look at this one.

K: Yeah, I like the feel of it between my fingers and I like to try and squish them without them flying away. The thicker and the longer ones are way more satisfying than the smaller ones. 

Z: If they fly away, do you look for them?

K: I've gotten to the point where I can like feel where they land if they land on my skin. 

I think this is a cool looking thing. It's also kind of like, I feel like I'm neurotic in a lot of ways and this is the one way that's physical that I can look back at. 

Z: Do you notice yourself doing this at particular times? Like when you are particularly stressed or when you are...

K: I used to think it was connected to stress but now its just a default even when I'm bored thing to do. I definitely need to stop after a while, cause it does start to hurt. My eyes get puffy. 

Z: Do you think you are going see if you can fill this entire jar?

K: Yeah. Definitely. 

K: I go through spurts of, I gotta do more and then, I need to stop this.

Z: What else do you collect?

K: Just wheat pennies. They have wheat on the back of them, so before 1950s.  I like all types of different coins, but the wheat pennies are best. I take these out of the register at work. 

A: I buy them from the registers at work for her. 

K: The boss's wife gives them to me too, so I'm pretty sure he doesn’t care. 

Z: Do you know how many you have?

K: I thought I had more, but then I put them in this vase and now it looks like way less. 

Yeah. I don’t really know why. I did start collecting coins as a kid and then my grandma got me whole books of new mint quarters and I wasn’t interested in the new ones, but I think it started with foreign coins. It reminded me of places I might be able to travel someday. These are European and Canadian. And then these are like really exotic American ones. This is a super old quarter. These are probably the most exciting to me. 

Z: Do you have any secret motivation behind why you collect coins?

K: I think it’s actually become more neurotic. 

Z: Is it a good thing to have collecting to express that kind of neurosis? 

K: I think so. I clean a lot, too.

Z: What does your mom think about your thrifting?

T: My mom and I thrift for different reasons and my mom doesn’t go to thrift stores. When we were younger I really saw the thrifting as part of the immigrant identity. My mother furnished our entire house with things she'd gotten second hand and I was really embarrassed by it growing up, I was like, Ohhhh God, could we just live like everybody else? But, as an adult I love it, right. I think it was such an interesting way to be introduced to culture. 

Z: And to objects.

T: And to objects. I was introduced to Danish Modernism by my mother because of her thrifting ways and she didn't know—my mother wouldn’t know what Modernism was if it bit her, but she had an eye. She didn’t know the history or the academics of it but she knew what she liked and tended to gravitate towards those things. 

Z: Did you go to flea markets with your mom? 

T: Oh yeah. All the time. I remember exactly that day when I was with my mom and she found this Stelton tray...which is a Danish serving tray. She bought it for a quarter at a garage sale and seriously 40 years later I'm in a store and I see that tray and I call up my mom and I say, You remember that tray that you bought for 25 cents? I want it. She says, I just threw it out. It’s in the backyard. 

Z: How much were they selling it for? 

T: Two hundred dollars. You could spend an entire day in my apartment with stories like that. Or this Hanz Vegnor couch I got for twenty dollars. 

Z: This?

T: Yea?

Z: Woah

T: I know

Z: Where?

T: Thrift store. I would like to have two things happen by the end of my life: I would like for everything in this house to come from a place like that (thrift town) or that I made it myself.

Z: How close are you to that?

T: 90%.

Z: Is collection in the blood stream?

T: Could be, yeah. 

T: My neighbor, Steve lived across the street and he was an amazing collector. Steve had been moved into assisted living and his cousin from Ohio came and she was selling his collections for like a dollar and I went over there and I bought all his belt buckles and all of his books. He was an older queer man and at some point as I was buying all this stuff and I was carrying it from his house, I looked out the window at my front door and I just had a vision of myself.

Z: It seems like (Truong inserts an eco-friendly coffee pod into his -- coffee machine) you also have a collection of cutting boards and pepper grinders. 

T: I love wood. I buy these with the intention of chopping them up. But, then they find there way in. I'm not ready to cut these up yet...

Z: But you will?

T: I don’t know. Right now I'm not doing any wood work because I have moved to acrylics but you know I think I collect the history of things more than I collect actual objects.

I will show you a piece—oh, I don’t have any sugar—oh I have sugar but I don’t have cream. Would you like sugar?

So I have a sculpture in the living room that I bought one object for fifteen years ago in a Goodwill. Fifteen years later in the same Goodwill, I found the matching piece...that allowed me to make the sculpture. It’s a very minimalist sculpture. 

Z: What are these?

T: You have three guesses.

Z: Wooden ice cream scoops? Salad scoops?

T: They are ergonomically correct salad scoops. So they tilt in a way that your hand goes like this…I think they are actually ladles.

Z: So you reunited a set?

T: I don’t know if I reunited a set. They found their way together.

Z: Have you had other instances like that?

T: All the time. I have this great story: I did an art piece using some vintage gay images and loved it, it’s one of the pieces I really appreciate. Years later, I had an open studio and a young woman came by and she was stunned and she says, That's my grandfather. I swear that’s my grandfather.

Z: What was the piece?

T: It was a nude image of him in a 1960s magazine. I don’t know who he is. I just thought this was a cool image and I wanted to use it. But that someone looked at it and said, that's my grandfather…

Z: So that brings new meaning to "collecting history."

T: Yeah, she could have said, you have no right to use this image. Take it off. But she didn’t. She actually said, thank you for using this image of my grandfather in your work, because I didn’t know that he took this photo. Interesting things like that happen sometimes when you make art with found objects. History finds its way to you.

Z: So do you do a lot of thrifting then?

T: It’s part of my art practice. The first thing I do in the morning is I leave the house with a giant bag. The hope is that I fill it up by the time I get to my studio and then they are material in my studio to work with. That's how everything starts. It starts with the walk and then I go from there. 

I have a massive collection of salt n’ pepper shakers. Modern salt n’ pepper shakers cause I like the duality of those objects. They always fit one another in some way and I like that they are slightly different also.

Z: They are all wood?

T: I have some ceramic ones but for the most part I like wood. I'm really into the shapes of things. I also collect shapes. I like the language of shapes. 

Z: This is not related to collecting at all, but it’s on my mind, I've been noticing in the news, people will compare different experiences like Gender related experiences to Racial experiences which I find extremely problematic...

T: People think that somehow just because you are queer you get a pass when it comes to the subjectivity of race. It’s not true. I experience a lot of racial bigotry within the queer communities. 

 If you go on spaces like dating sites, they're really overt about it, statements like, No Asian Gold diggers please. All over. And no one stops to say, Hey, that's not acceptable. It’s very strange. 

Z: It seems like per-community, sometimes there is one big topic that gets a lot of attention then others-

T: There's a notion of stacking. Case and point, I did a show with a queer Caucasian artist, and I love him dearly, we did the show together. It was a two-person show and the PR person for the non-profit space insisted that I talk about the Asian-ness of my work again and again and again. The PR person was just always steering me towards that, and I was like this has nothing to do with that. It was piece relating to these cranes. I have a student who folds cranes, obsessively. She went through a program at State and for the duration of that graduate program, the only way she could stay actively involved and contribute to the conversation in class was to fold these cranes as she was sitting there talking. She was always folding them and one day she came up to me and she said, I have 20, 000 cranes. Would you like to have them? and I said, Of course. I just liked the idea that she made 20, 000 cranes obsessively to somehow contain whatever anxiety she had to, so that she could do this work.

So I made a piece of art to honor that. It was a giant mound of cranes on the floor and the PR person at the place kept saying talk to us about the cranes and the Japanese history of the cranes and I said, That's Japanese. I'm Vietnamese. My student is Vietnamese. This is about her obsession. This is not about the Japanese-ness of the cranes. 

We exist in a world where everyone’s trying to figure out what container best fits us, or can contain the majority of our being.  As an artist I'm trying vey hard to push against that, but, yeah, it’s not something I can avoid.

I find that my most abstract works tend to address the most concrete considerations in my life, like race. There's nothing abstract for me about race. It’s a very real thing that I live with. That consciousness is pervasive in my making. Like this piece is all about race.

(description of color chart)

Z: What's this piece called?

T: This is a piece that was born from the reality of being misplaced from my studio. I didn’t have materials. I didn’t have a workshop. All I had for the 4 months of summer was my walks and my neighborhood. So I start walking to all the hardware stores and they're friends of mine and they said, Why don’t you take some color swatches? I kept collecting color swatches from all the hardware stores and I created this movement of color. The hole in the middle that I still have to cut out and frame in a video pod, is going to be a moving image of all, or as many of the lives that I can collect images of, that have been effected by the violence of our society. The piece itself is going to be called, Framed Within the Context of White cause there is this really startling white frame that I'm working with.

Z: So when you go to thrift stores, does everybody know you?

T: Everybody knows me, yeah. (Grins from ear to ear). It’s almost embarrassing. You are like Norm at the bar. Also because there was a video made about my bullseyes that kind of went viral so everybody in the community started recognizing me as the guy who got displaced, so everybody started talking to me about that. 

Z: When you were collecting the bowls, was it just any bowl? Any wooden bowl? Were there things you were looking for specifically?

T: Shapes. Accessibilities. I don’t just buy the bowls; I have to chop them up.

Z: And the queer porn? Where do you find the porn?

T: I was going on one of my early morning walks and my neighbor was unloading a giant box of gay porn, all paper print porn and he was about to put into the recycling and I said, What are you doing? and he said, I'm cleaning out my life. I saw all that material...I'm not going to turn that away.  So, I said, let me have it, I’ll figure out what to do with it and I took it and I kept it in my basement and I have this huge supply of vintage gay porn, not all of them are even gay. There are a lot of playgirls, but then again the majority of people who bought playgirls were gay men. 

And then about 6 months to a year later I received word from another neighbor that my friend had passed away. I was sitting with all this material and I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but the minute that I heard of his passing, something clicked and I realized I'm going to make him a blanket to send him off into his afterlife, so it was a gestural thing and I started weaving the porn with old nature calendars to represent the passing of time. 

I made little pieces that I sewed them together into a large quilt. I didn’t have much thought about what that material incited. I just did it. Then when I did it and it was shown, I had the realization that everyone brings so much interpretation and consideration to that material. A lot of people were asking why I didn’t use more images of men of color in the work as though somehow seeing the image of a man of color in the art connected it with my own identity. That's what they wanted. Right? That was never the intention for me. And then I actually felt so pressured by the community asking me these questions again and again that I started doing research on how to use more images of people of color. One thing that I discovered that I was really uncomfortable with and pushed me away from that practice was I would have to go to the sections in magazine stores that were pretty much categorized as fetish. You want to go to the Black Men's section, or the Asian Boy Toys. It’s always categorized in that way and I didn’t want to do that. And then I had to remind myself that this was found material. 

Z: Did you feel a little like, how dare you? It’s just, having talked to you and knowing that you are working with found materials...

T: Yeah, but at the same time...usually that kind of criticism comes from your own community.

Z: Do you think it’s a thing where people are uncomfortable, so they find a thing they can latch on to?

T: It’s there own discomfort. Most of the time when I’m being questioned about anything, it’s about the other person's discomfort. 

Z: I’ve noticed that too, with the pronouns… I think people get uncomfortable partly because they feel like they wont be able to get the pronouns right, so they are like but the language and the grammar, etc...

T: And I do that myself and that has everything to do with my discomfort being an immigrant English Teacher and you know that's not my first language and I'm protecting myself or this notion of my own identity as well as anyone else’s in that moment. It’s just a strange moment in time where we are dealing with this. 

Z: Have you found that within the gay community that there is a tendency towards collecting?

T: I think sometimes, collecting comes with eccentricity and I don’t have a theoretical definition. I don’t have any real theories about this, but a lot of my queer friends tend to be a little more eccentric. I think the act of coming out, especially for someone of my generation, took a lot of mustering up chutzpah, so when you get there, once you’re there...This interview is going to be totally incoherent. 

Z: That's fine. 

(Mail pours/bursts through the front door and clanks to the ground.)

Z: It is interesting how much visual artists seem to be collectors. A lot of the people I’ve been interviewing also are visual artists. 

T: I feel like collecting becomes an art in itself.

Z: Did you always know you were going to, though?

T: No. No because I had a very practical seed in my head and part of that was to find a way to support myself and find a living and art was just not gong to be a likely, you know?

Z: I've also found a lot of people with their collections have rules to follow.

T: Systems. I have dear friends who think, He collects salt and pepper shakers and they start coming at me with salt and pepper shakers and it is not what I'm looking for. That's the thing, when you collect, the object speaks to you and it reveals it’s history to you. 

Z: Are there any other collections you have that you don't use in your work? Or can anything go into it?

T: I like to think that almost anything will find its way into the work. 

Z: That's what makes me think you are not a hoarder. What are those?

T: Kokeshi dolls. They are Japanese toys from the 1950s. 

Z: Is that a collection you got all at once?

T: Yea. I found it at the flea market and I was like I can’t separate these. I can’t let anyone else separate them. That's the other part of collecting, you see something and your compulsion, it wasn’t so much that I had a desire for Kockeshi dolls. I couldn't let it...

Z: Be dispersed?

T: It’s like I saw a family and I couldn’t see the family being broken apart so I bought it all and I'm going to make it an installation. 

Z: Would you cut them up?

T: No, no absolutely not. 

Camerina describes her collections, the similarities between Batman and fairies and family collecting in this thoughtful interview with Zoe Rosenblum. Photography by Tristan Crane.

C: It’s funny when you decide you have a spirit animal or animal you really connect with because then every holiday people get you turtle things. 

Z: I’ve heard it can be overwhelming when a community finds out about a collector’s collection. It becomes a social thing.

C: Oh, totally. Most of these things I didn't get for myself. 

Z: You just told one person you liked turtles?

C: Yeah, or how I identified with turtles, rather. Like this one was the first gift that Leah ever got me, (Cheena turns a small turtle figurine over in their hand) and it was like a weird Christmas present cause we met in November, and—it’s like you know when you start dating somebody and you don’t really know them that well? It was like that, uh here's something so you have something to open for Christmas.

Z: How would you describe your collection? What defines it?

C: It’s turtle things, mostly. It’s funny cause I don’t know that it started out as a collection. It just happened. I decided turtles were my spirit animal after my sophomore year of college. I had taken this evolutionary biology class where we read an article talking about how turtles are born male or female depending on temperature; I became super obsessed with that. 

Z: Do you remember which for which?

C: When it is really hot or really cold the turtles are born female, but then there is this five degree window between the two where the sex could be male. Turtles are weird. They always crawl back to the beach where they were born. The first few years of their lives no one knows where they go.

Z: What do you mean?

C: They have never been tracked right after being born—and they follow the moonlight on the ocean. I think I kind of look like a turtle. 

Z Your bowl cut helps.

(Cheena runs their hands through their bowl cut.)

C: Maybe it’s kind of shell-like? I feel like from the nose down I look like a turtle. I've always thought about getting a turtle tattoo because I identify with them so much. But, I've never done it cause every drawing you see is kind of ugly and cartoon-like. I would probably want to get one in the style of scientific etching.

Z: Have your turtles ever been inspiration for you artistically?

C: Oh, totally!  My undergrad thesis manuscript was a collection of poetry about turtles based on that little tidbit about how they are born male or female. It was not directly about turtles, you know. It was poems that explore gender and my relationship with my dad. Now I'm like ugh, I never want to read those again. 

Z: Is there anything else you want to say about your turtle collection? Do you have plans for it?

C: I think that I've moved around so much, I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff but I will never get rid of a turtle thing. Its funny with spirit animals...I just feel like it found me. My Gender, My Turtle; that’s what my thesis was called. Just kidding.

Boxes and Bottles and Flowers

N: I collect a variety of things. I collect boxes. I collect jars. I collect pressed flowers. I used to collect playing cards. I had hundreds of them. They're in my parent’s attic now. Wherever I went, I'd purchase playing cards. My mother is an antiques dealer. She was a florist for a while. A lot of my most unique items come from her or are her findings.

Z: Did your collections begin intentionally or unintentionally?

N:  I think the nature of collecting is innate in human beings. Boxes, for me, make a lot of sense. I had a very sentimental experience with a particular box when I was young. When I was four years old, I was a kind of a kleptomaniac. I stole money from my parents’ wallets. My dream was to build a cash register; I was obsessed with building a cash register. Any type of media that I was dealing with, like Legos or Connects, I was always trying to build a cash register out of to put cash in. This is from age 4 -7 or something like that. At one point in time I stole this box from my father. I hid all my findings in it behind the door to my room, because, you know, when people open the door you can't see behind it. (Nick retrieves the box and opens it lovingly) I used to just put things in here, and at the time it had this wonderful smell of cedar. (Smells box) It still kind of has it. It also smells like pencils now. This box belonged to my grandfather, who I've never met. Eventually my mother found all the stuff behind the door and they were really, really worried about what I would turn into. They took it all back and chastised me. My father gave it back to me later on.

Another possible reason for my obsession with boxes, and I do see it as an obsession, is this thing that happened at University of North Texas. I was recording my boxes--the sounds of the drawers opening--which to me that sound is just so sexy. (laughing). I recorded this box that I have with big drawers, and I went to the studio and was splicing up the sounds and didn’t realize that all the levels in the mixer were at their max. So I played this sound of a drawer closing which normally sounds like shhhhh, but when I played it in the studio, it was this gigantic sound and it scared the living shit out of me. It hit me on an emotional level. All these emotions just went BAM and I was crazy afraid. I just jumped and started crying. I had an emotional breakdown because of this drawer sound. It was the breaking down of a lot of situations in my mind. That sound of closing; it is indescribable. It is still very strong with me.

The flowers came about when I was walking with my girlfriend, Tory, through Rockridge. There was this consignment store that she wanted to go in to look for pressed flowers. She said this was a great place because an old woman runs it and grandmothers are the only people that can make proper pressed flowers. I thought, Bullshit. Her birthday was coming up, so I spent a whole month collecting every single flower in Berkeley and pressing it. On her birthday, I covered her whole apartment in pressed flowers and then I couldn’t stop. I just continued collecting more and more and more. I keep them in an archival box. 

Z: What makes a good box or a good jar or a good flower? What are the characteristics that speak to you?

N: It has to be unique. If you are a collector, that should be your first rule, unless you are collecting something really rare. Otherwise I'd just go to Michael’s and buy every single box that they sell.

I'm searching for this particular box that can house all of my inks and all of my ideas. I dunno. It is really abstract. I want an apothecary cabinet of sorts. Some people watch fashion sites or fashion porn; my object porn would be apothecary collections. When I'm in a bad mood, I'll just scan google for boxes and jars and cabinets. I really like hidden things. I have this really cool box that is an antique, and you open it up and it has all these vials.

With the flowers it is definitely the color. Shape and patterns make them much more attractive, as well. However, there are some flowers I just despise, like agapanthus! Oh my god, I can’t stand them. But I think it is because they are abundant here, and I am drawn to uniqueness and complexity. I don’t have any daisies in my collection--oh that is not true, I do. I don’t have any dandelions in my collection.  Hmm…I might. I might have some dandelions.

Z: If resources and space were not an issue, how would you display your collections?

N: I would incorporate the flowers and the boxes into a multimedia event with sonic representations of the flowers themselves. I'd also display the flowers alongside the visual art that I do. The boxes and jars I've used already in performance, and I think that I will continue to do that—sonic pieces with my collections.

Z: Your collections seem to carry strong sound significance to you.

N: Yeah, I get sounds and visuals mixed up a lot. (laughing) Like I was leading a workshop on color theory, and I just started talking about music for a second. And I thought, wait a minute, this is not a music lecture; it is a color lecture. I think of a lot of these things as the same and it’s difficult for me to separate them. 

Z: Describe the sonic pieces you’ve done with your jars and boxes.

N: For my master's thesis in music, I utilized my collection by conducting instrumentalists with jars and boxes. I created notations that would correspond to the color of ink that was dripped inside the jars to xylophones and glockenspiels and other keyboard instruments. The boxes were used to conduct bass drums. I had two double bass, three cellos, a woodblock and some other auxiliary percussion. The opening or closing of a particular box would correspond to a song cue. Some of the boxes corresponded to only certain instruments, so I would use them for improvisation--to be able to manipulate or to conduct the ensemble on the spot. How much the boxes opened would correspond to the dynamic level. I also synched up certain sonic gestures with actual drawers opening. The second act was sonified flowers. I created a notation for them, too, so the instrumentalists would be able to present the sound of their color patterns.

Z: Can you speak about your system of notation?

N: The notation that I've been alluding to includes two-dimensional figures of jars with various shades and hues of color. That particular mapping that I've grown attached to also seems to be consistent with the looks of what are called Urine Jars. Urine Jars are a predecessor to the color wheel. Generally speaking, there were 30 of them. They were used to diagnose pregnancy and various other medical things. They were adopted from an alchemist during the 13th century. When I discovered them, it seemed both coincidental and very telling. I'm interested in an aesthetic that has clearly been around for a long time. I certainly feel a little strange for some of my obsessions and especially the aesthetic that I have. I like to think that I strive for something that is more unique, but it is cool to realize that what I'm interested in both visually and tangibly is something that people have been interested in for a long time. I don’t really believe in other lives, but if I did I would assume that I was an alchemist a long time ago. I would love to be an alchemist. I aspire to be an alchemist. Scratch the whole thing about other lives. I would love to have been an alchemist.   

Z: Do you have any other thoughts on collecting or on Queer Collections?

I think collecting is a way of being in control of your surroundings and to some extent, if you are trying to be in control of your surroundings then you, in fact, are not. Being queer is certainly difficult ...I mean every queer has their own path. There is no set path. That path is something that you have to create and figure out, particularly if you are not from an area that is open to queerness. Being in control of your surroundings can allude to that idea of feeling safe with yourself. I think it is a stretch to make collecting about queerness. I don’t collect because I'm queer; I collect because of anxiety and insecurity. I think everyone does.

Bryan: These are my pencil sharpeners.

Z: I like the Mr. T. 

B: That is probably one of my favorites.

Z: How much do you actually use pencils now?

B: Not very often. I have one I use in case I need it. I mean a lot of these are all rusty. This one when you use it to sharpen, the mouse pops up. (Bryan spins it around his hand.) This is the only one I've found with a movable aspect. I'm surprised there aren’t more of those.

Z: How many pencil sharpeners to you think you have?

B: Over two hundred. In bins in my closet.  Dolly gets her own wall. It’s slowly growing. I’m going to do more Dolly collages. 

Z: Are there some that you group together?

B: Yeah, definitely—definitely 80s. I have a lot of Garfield. I have a set of these Hanna Barbera characters...I don’t even think people know about these characters. They were in this flying arch. I forget the name of the cartoon. I think Yogi Bear was part of it, too.

Nowadays they aren’t as iconic. Objects in general are less about Pop culture. Back in the 80s there were a lot of TV shows and cartoons that had a lot of merchandise. If I go on vacation, and it’s like iconic of that place, I'll buy a pencil sharpener. But, if it’s not or if I'm not wowed by it, I wont buy it. 

Z: So, would you say that you started this collection pretty intentionally?

B: Yes definitely. I think so. I got one and then every time I saw one...I just thought they were pretty cool. I think my family was really supportive of it. My mom is a collector. Growing up she had spoons on the wall from traveling, and then she collected thimbles, and she collects cow creamers. She has this amazing collection of cow creamers.

Z: Have your pencil sharpeners ever inspired you artistically?

B: Oh--actually, yes. (Bryan goes into his living room and returns carrying four metal objects). I totally forgot about these. I worked at a bronze foundry for a while, and I made a cast of Mr. T; then I cut his head off and added different heads onto his body. So, here is Jesus on Mr. T's body; this is Michael Jackson on Mr. T; here is a monkey and here is a skull. This was supposed to be cobra commander, but it didn’t really work. They are just in the front room on the coffee table. I need a better display place for those too.  I also cast that skull pencil sharpener to make drawer pulls.  

I did this project once in school, too, where I saved every disposable cup I used for at least a year. I had them in my house stacked up on the stairs and (laughing) sometimes they would fall at night. My friends thought I had a problem. It looked crazy. I had all these paper cups in the hallway. My friends broke into my house and took them all. We had a bon fire that night and burned all the paper ones. They threw away the plastic ones. It was fun. I was ready to let them go.

Z: I've been talking a lot with people about the difference between collecting and hoarding. Do you have thoughts on that?

B: I think, like even with those bread tags some people would think those are just trash, but when you have a whole bunch in different jars it changes a little bit. There's a fine line. It could get out of control quickly. I think that’s what hoarding is uncontrolled collections. You watch those shows and you see that they started with teapots and then all of sudden they can't throw away their trash. Collecting is a civilized way of hoarding. 

Z: What makes it more civilized?

B: I think it’s more controlled.

Z: Does that mean maintaining the ability to decipher what is good and what to let go of?

B: Yeah, some people cant stop. 

Z: Is hoarding about just letting it amass? 

B: I think maybe with hoarding, the first few pieces you never know where they are at. But with my collecting, I remember the history of the pieces. 

Z: Who painted your Dolly portrait?

B: A really good friend of mine. She told me she did commissions. So, I was like, ok I want Dolly. 

Z: You have a lot of tattoo's as well. 

B: Yeah, I have a Dolly tattoo. 

Z: you do?

B: Yeah, I got it with my friend in. 

Z: Do you think that tattoos are collections?

B: Yeah, I think so. My legs are all my close friends. It’s all names so I think It’s like a collection of my friends. 

Z: I hadn’t thought about tattoos as being a collection until talking to you.

B: I guess, I'm not sure. I'd say the name tattoos are, but I don’t know about the other ones. They might just be decoration. 

Z: Is collecting social for you, or is it more of a private thing?

B: It used to be more social. But, now I think its more private. Once people know then they hunt for the object you collect... I had a partner that collected snow globes. When people would travel places they'd get him snow globes. It got out of control. We didn’t have space for them, and then it’s like, you didn’t actually go to this place and get this thing, someone else did. 

I think collecting is healthy. It holds a lot of memories. A lot of them, I know where I was and what I was feeling at the time. Whenever I see Dolly Parton it’s always really joyous ...you just want to hold on to it, like just remember it. They don't have a Dollywood pencil sharpener. I have a pencil sharpener that is two boobs...but I didn’t get it there.

Z: That's what you think of as your Dolly pencil sharpener?

B: (Laughing) Yeah. 

A: Well, I have a photocopy collection, which I have been putting photocopies in and taking photocopies out of since I was maybe 14 or 15. I have a collection of melted birthday candles. I collect teabag tags, bread tags, golf tees, buttons, rusty nails, cake decorations, different printed matter like small old printed packaging, the four CYK circles from cereal boxes, spools, street sweeper blades. I like radiating objects. I like phallic objects. 

My collecting reminds me of certain childhood things. Like our family Christmas tree was over the top. It was not tasteful. There was no theme. It was full. Many boxes of shit put on one tree: beautiful handmade stuff with cheesy plastic shit, stuff the kids had made, stuff from grandma's childhood. I like that kind of aesthetic, lots of colors and things that you grow familiar with. Things that are very familiar or that you imagine relationships between.

There are certain things that go together. There’s some amount of visual rhyming: things that are a similar shape go together; things that are a similar color go together. They create some kind of story with each other.

With bread tags, I've gotten really into the ones that are deformed or melted. I really like that. I like the ones that have been run over in the street a lot. The golf teas...my leas favorite are the natural wood ones. Both of them I like having text on or numbers. With the exception of the melted bread tags they are much more interesting in groupings than the are as individuals. So I like to set them up in rows, stacks. 

Z: What are street sweeper blades?

A: So, the street sweeper machine that has those big metal brushes that go around, they fall off. They are flat skinny steel and vary in length from a few inches to a foot long. I learned to pick them up from my grandmother. She thought they were useful. They’re spring-steel. They’re a good little tool for poking in at something or applying glue onto a small surface, or mixing something. I would weave them into antennas and leave them places.

There’s usually places that you find them more and it’s funny cause I always used to pick them up as a pedestrian and when I started riding a bike more I kinda stopped picking them up and now I feel like with any of the things that I like to pick up I've internalized a little bit of like telling myself not pick them up. Sometimes I pass them by now, but I used to weave them into a little woven antennae’s and leave them places...most houses that I've lived in. Obviously I've shown great restraint here.

I like setting the golf tees up with the pokey side up in rows, like on tops of windows. Oh, conjoined matches are another collection. 

Oh, double-headed matches are another collections, like conjoined matches. 

Z: You have a print of conjoined matches and of the bread tags. Have you made prints of other things you collect?

A: Yeah, nails, a lot of things are potentially art inspiration. Things look good in groupings, anything is more interesting when there's a bunch of it, repetition. I'm a printmaker. There are things that I've had for years that I haven't made art about. And then there are other objects that come up over and over again. I don't know why. And its like, Why did that thing get all this attention? This other thing is just as weird or interesting.

Z: How much time do you think you devote to your collections or rearranging them or finding places for them. 

A: Recently, the past few months its not that big of a deal, but sometimes thats like, especially when I have my own room I can spend a lot of time playing with stuff—actually this project I've been spending time on this month is actually really great cause I've given myself permission to use some of my favorite photocopies in the collages which is kind of scary and kind of freeing at the same time. It makes me realize that I need to make more photo copies. But it makes me realize that I need to make more photocopies-which was not my intention, I'm like I need to make more, but there's still a big stack...the new photocopy machines aren’t as good, unfortunately. 

Z: So what makes a good bread tag or a good golf tea or a good streetsweeper blade?

A: Well, both the bread tags and the golf teas come in different colore. So, in both instances I prefer the colored ones over the white ones. With bread tags, I've gotten really into the ones that are deformed or melted. I really like that. I like the ones that have been run over in the street a lot. The golf teas...my leas favorite are the natural wood ones. Both of them I like having text on or numbers. With the exception of the melted bread tags they are much more interesting in groupings than the are as individuals. So I like to set them up in rows, stacks. 

Z: Where do you keep everything?

A: You know, everything is a little messed up right now because before Greta was born my office space moved upstairs. So, all my stuff is in a box. Part of what I enjoy about collecting is setting up little dioramas of them. It’s not very practical, so I've tried to figure out which spaces I'm allowed to colonize and which ones are off limits.

Z: Do you feel like the things you collect help you to create worlds?

A: It’s like vignettes. It’s like another universe. They are metaphors for things or they are like characters, or landscapes.

Z: If you were given limitless resources to display your collections how would you display them?

A: Oh, windowsills are really good; a horizontal surface that is a few inches deep is great; the top of the dresser is a good deep surface where I can do a more elaborate setup.

Z: But for now, when they are not out, they are in a box?

A: Which I feel bad about because they are my most prized possessions and they are jumbled together. I have certain anxieties about that sort of stuff...when I was moving from La Bahia to Chavez we were moving with a red wagon. It was dark and I was pulling a load of stuff and a bunch of my special arrangements were squished into some mason jars and the cart tipped over. One of the jars broke and I was picking through this combination of trash on the sidewalk and broken glass and my most precious little bits of lots of trash. It was an anxiety dream come true-- sifting through trash in the dark with broken glass...but it’s precious to me. (laughing) I was like WHAT AM I DOING?

Z: You have so many jars of things. 

A: I like the combined jars a lot. I like bright things with gross things; bright plastic things with rusty crusty things. I really love cake decorations. I have done some filling up of Easter eggs with rusty nails and cake decorations and leaving them places. They get really gross in the rain and I love--oh I love string tangles, knots of stuff. Chaos and organizing chaos. The most interesting ones are colorful and kind of gross. I keep coming back to that combination of things. The cake decorations are actually from the Bargain Barn. The golf tees are, too.  

Z: Do you find a lot of stuff at the Bargain Barn?

A: I used to go several times a week or daily. Some of my favorite things are from the floor ‘cause it’s like the lowest of the low. It’s foul. I really love finding religious objects on the floor of the Bargain Barn—and toys because they both have this hopefulness to them and were potentially something really special to somebody and then they’re on the floor of the Bargain Barn…I especially like finding things when it rains cause the water just kind of flows through there, you know? There'll just be like drifts of disgustingness. 

Z: Are there other places you go beside the Bargain Barn?

A: I really love picking things up off the ground, like when I'm on a walk or I find a lot of things at my parents' house because they are hoarders.

Z: Is your parents' house organized? Can you talk about their hoarding?

A: There are 'stuff' problems on both sides of the family.

My grandmother was a collector and kind of a maximalist, but she was very organized and tidy in her collections. But, anything that broke, she saved because she was going to fix it and sometimes she did. But there were also boxes of things to be fixed. All the surfaces were covered. There were dioramas of wood and rocks and creatures everywhere. Even in her kitchen ‘cause she didn’t cook. She opened cat food, and I think that's about it. Part of the memory of her house is the smell of an empty cat food can in the sink. She was a big aesthetic inspiration for me. I have a collection of her teeth, which is pretty intense. 

Both my parents are scroungers. I feel very glad that I was indoctrinated young to be a scrounger. So, dumpster diving, picking things up off the road, anything you can get for free is good. I feel like my dad is potentially more of a hoarder. He's an engineer. There is a surplus of electronic equipment that he sees value in, from a bygone era. I might not even know what some piece of electronics is but he has 30 of them. You cannot walk in his workshop. It’s pathological. And at his brother's house there's like little tunnels, little mazes through stuff. My mother told me that my grandfather had a workshop in the basement, and he drank tea and every time he was done with a teabag, he put it on top of the exposed pipes. The basement pipes were just lined with used teabags. I am like, it’s a brain thing. It’s got to be a brain thing.

My mom has a big restaurant china collection, every cabinet is full, but there's like furniture and magazines stacked on the furniture in front of the full cabinets, so you can't even get to it. Neither of them take care of stuff which is the part that creeps me out the most. That it’s just like, it happens to be totally chance you know, like what is the framed art on the wall and what is the framed art that's sitting around in a pile. What is the precious thing that is on the shelf in the living room and what's the thing that's like getting stepped on and broken...it’s like my grandmother's teeth were in a box of beautiful things from other countries and junk mail—just all together. That's the part that I find really disturbing.

That’s not taking care of the things...or that’s not interacting with them, let alone taking care of them.

Z: Do you think that is the distinction between hoarding and collecting?

A: I hope so. I have friends who tease me for saving things and I feel sensitive about it. Then there is part of me that is like, No, I've got this under control. One of my sisters doesn’t have it under control. She got the problem. She, like, buys shoes online and then doesn’t remember that she bought the shoes. She finds them unopened in the box because it got buried, and then she's like, Oh I forgot I bought these shoes. And I'm like, I have like three pairs of shoes I wear, how can you forget you bought a pair? Buying a pair of shoes is monumental. It’s just kind of different. I guess people have stuff problems in different ways. I think taking care of stuff and being able to enjoy it—that is the line I try to maintain...and I do stray from it and I get piles of stuff that I can't deal with...and then I eventually deal with it. I think living in a small space with another person who is also a collector but will periodically purge his collections, that helps. 

Z: What does Josh collect?

A: Materials. But, I mean, there are like file drawers that are labeled "hooks and hinges" and they have hooks and hinges in them. He tries to be practical about it, but we both appreciate reusing materials so we both pick up materials that are useful for reuse. 

Z: It sounds like you get things from people and you find things. Do you like the social elements of collecting?

A: Sometimes. Sometimes people get it really right. Those little grey balls over there are dryer lint from my sister that she sent me because she thought I'd be interested in them. She took apart her dryer and somehow lint had gotten around the outside of the drum so it had been felted into these cool little eggs. And I do love them. She sent them without an explanation and I was just like, these are amazing.

Z: If someone found a bag of 300 golf teas and offered it to you, would you be excited about that or would that stress you out?

A: It might stress me out a little bit, but I could always put them in mason jars. I've often thought maybe I should do some more assemblage art with my collections. But, I'm a little too attached for that. I like being able to arrange them, even if I stick with the same combination for a long time. Then they are still also their selves.

Z: So, you mentioned you have some shame around your collections…

A: I am scared of going down a dark path. I think collecting is a warning sign in myself. Then also, I get a lot of joy out of my collections. I'm not a minimalist. I'm not going to be a minimalist. I don’t want to make myself miserable by thinking that I ought to go there...but I have to hold myself back.

Z: From your collection potential?

A: Yeah. Before Josh and I were sharing this house, almost all the surfaces in my room were either like mess collecting or carefully arranged collecting. So, if you set down a cup, you were messing up a diorama. It becomes not functional.

Z: Do you have plans for your grandmother’s teeth?

A: No. The first one I found while going through some of her stuff. My sister was going to throw the tooth away. She was like, that is disgusting and I was like, no you don't, I need that. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I'm glad I have them. (laughing) It's kind of disturbing, but also I'm interested in bones and bodies. 

Z: I don’t find it disturbing for you.

A: I don’t find it disturbing for me, either. I feel like it might be disturbing for someone else. It was disturbing for my sister. It might be really disturbing for my mom, but I'm really glad I have them. 

Z: How do people react when they find out you collect trolls?

E: I actually was thinking about you recently because

Oh my god, so so many reactions. It’s been more of a thing recently.

Z: Cause you've been out-ed as a troll collector?

E: Yeah. I think I’ve been outing myself more, too. I talk about it more. And so people send me pictures of trolls all the time. My friend sent me a picture of a Jewish troll on Chaunuka. It had a little Jewish star.

I recently started dating two new people and one of them came over to my house and one of my housemates was home and somehow or another, trolls came up and my housemate was like, oh you should show them your collection. It was pretty much a first date. I mean we'd been friends and flirting for a year and a half and then we finally were on our first date I showed them all of my trolls and it was just really vulnerable. It was like, you are either going to think I'm a total freak in a really repulsive way, or you are going to find it endearing. 

Z: That’s a big piece of you. 

E: I feel really unsure of how people are going to react, cause I don't know what it looks like from the outside and to me it’s this pretty funny cute thing, but from the outside… I could see how it could be really fucking weird. But they were into it. We had a great date. So I thank the trolls for that.

Then I went on a date with this other person who also came back to my house and was like, what's the deal with all these little creatures everywhere? Cause they are in the bathroom looking at you when you pee. They're in the kitchen. They are kind of everywhere. 

My housemates have mixed feelings about the trolls. They think it’s real creepy and weird and I try to be respectful of their space. I think they think its funny for the most part. We had a new person move in a few months ago and she had a lot of questions about the trolls.

Z: What kind of questions?

E: Just like Why are they everywhere? and What’s the deal? Reasonable questions.

Z: As a person, who is more or less straight, I want to know what you think about me doing these interviews with queer people. 

E: It’s an interesting thing, but I think it happens a lot where "outsiders" get interested in some phenomena in a community that they are not a part of and I think that can be really problematic, but I also think that drawing on your own connections with people, like we met through work, you told me about this thing, we met to talk about something totally different and then... you know, when its founded in personal connections, I think that makes a big difference. It’s a part of your extended community, even if you are not a part of that identity cluster, and I would trust that you are sensitive and like, yeah, that you can hold yourself in a way that is accountable and when you are using these interviews for whatever they end up being for that those voices and stories and identities are honored and not exploited.

Z: Where do you think the line is between honor and exploitation?

E: I think if you are doing a project where you are the curator of queer voices, it’s really important to center those voices whether that's like even in the way you lay out the stories or where you put peoples names or pictures and how you place yourself in that. Basically, not centering you as this, I'm going to visibilize these previous invisible stories, but showing that these are people who are , who have made themselves visible to the world in a vulnerable way through their collections, through being queer. That's where the power lies and you become a conduit for those stories. I think there is something about your not taking ownership of, here are my stories of queer collections, cause they are not your stories, but I think you know that. 

Z: Do you remember where you got your first troll?

E: I don’t think there was ever just one troll. I think they came in herds. My only strong memory of receiving trolls is from my grandpa.

I don’t have a very good memory of my childhood and trolls are one of the most vivid that I do have. I remember picking up my grandpa from the airport and he brought me trolls in this basket and the basket was wrapped in plastic and I just remember like ravaging through to get to the trolls.

Z: And was he pretty special to you?

E: No. We didn’t have a very close relationship.  I was close to my grandparents because my family was close with them, but out of my family I remain the least close to all of my grandparents. 

I was the youngest of three and none of my older sisters wanted to move into the basement once it was too much for all of us to be sharing a room, so I ended up moving to the basement when I was 8 years old...which was like two floors away from everyone else who was sleeping and I was just a tiny child in the basement with my trolls. There was this like green carpet. That was troll city. 

Z: Did you call it that?

E: I don’t know.

Z: Did you think of it that way?

E: I mean, yeah, that was where the trolls were. I played with them wherever but most of my memories of playing with them are down there. I would have troll weddings where there was only a bride of one big bride troll and nobody else. I mean there was a community of small trolls but there was never really a groom. 

Z: Was she getting married to the community?

E: She was just getting married. It was never really—it was about her, just about her and everybody was there to celebrate her.

Z: Why did you find them so fascinating?

E: Aesthetically, I really liked them and I liked that you could change all their outfits and that all the outfits were for different occasions. They are all pretty silly, too and just weird, like trolls are pretty fucking weird. I liked that it was this thing that...I think they were pretty popular but I didn’t play with them with friends. It was my thing. I was just fascinated by them.

More recently, as I've had a few in my possession over the years, and I didn’t know where the rest of them had gone and then when we were going through my parents basement we found all of them and I flipped out, I was like, I’m taking all of these back! I was so excited and just started to see—whether or not I realized this as a kid—these are gender queer. They don’t have a gender.

For so long I called one of my sweeties, Troll when she was like running through the woods and she got really offended because people don’t have good associations with trolls. You are the cutest troll running through the woods right now.

Z: Do you think you picked up on the gender queerness as a kid?

E: I dunno, it’s hard to say. I wasn't a tomboy--whatever that means--but I wasn’t super femmy. I definitely didn’t have the language to think that, but I never gave them a gender, which I think is pretty rare. So many kids toys are so gendered and I would dress them and undress them and they just had these bodies—all bodies.

Z: You are really easily changing identities, cause their clothes really identify…

E: There gender expression! Totally! They are all completely constantly changing.

Z: Are there specific characteristics that you’re attracted to?

E: Yeah, I really like the ones that have one gem ear piercing, just cause it is so cute and so gay and that is part of why they've stuck around in my adult life, because they are so gay and I feel like its really cool to have little gay creatures all around me.

Z: They totally walk this really interesting line of mystical/magical and campy. They could go either way. 

E: They are pretty tacky also. I didn’t like that they are made out of plastic and they are really neon. That is not really my aesthetic now...but the wooden trolls it’s a whole other thing. They are really gnarly and ugly. I think these trolls are cute. 

Z: What's their hair made out of?

E: Plastic...it’s pretty gross. The ones that I put in my room are colors that I like more. I mean there's really neon orange and yellow. I think those are the ones I steer clear of, but then there's jewel tone red and turquoise blue. The ones with overalls are also my favorite. 

I think if my aesthetic was different they'd be more campy. But because my room and my car are pretty earthy, it tones them down. They are the only thing in my room made of plastic. 

My housemates stay up a lot later than I do so I was trying to think of a thing to put on my door so they know that I'm sleeping…

Eli Ana walks to the other side of the room and retrieves a troll.

…so I hang this on my door. 

Z: Your sleeping troll?

E: Yeah. Actually I had a talk with this troll cause she was on my herb shelf and I was like, Oh you don’t want to be there and—I've been having more out loud conversations with my trolls lately—and I realized that she wanted to be hanging on the door. 

Z: That's awesome. They are ways for you to communicate, too. 

E: She's my new favorite. It’s like a little creepy when she's hanging on here, but I think it’s pretty great. 

Z: She allows you to sleep. 

E: Yeah. She’s very helpful. Part of my identity, I mean it’s not really quantifiable, but I feel very much like a silly queer. I try not to take life too seriously in certain ways, cause there’s a lot of really intense shit and there are a lot of really intense things about being queer and about being alive in the world today and I feel like I spend too much of my life in this really intense space and it’s nice to come home and have these silly creatures surround me. I think they are part of my resilience and my ability to be an activist and community organizer, to have the things in my life that are silly and nurturing and make me laugh and start conversations with people that are different. 

Z: Do you feel like they help to create a world within your room? Are they the lynchpins of the world?

E: They definitely are a glue. They definitely are a thread throughout my room and I think a lot about where they are placed and how they interact with each other and the rest of the place...the reason why I took her off of my shelf is that I'm also really protective of my herbs and like what goes in and around my herbs and I was like, that lady is intense. She has something to say and I don’t want her next to my herbs, cause she is like a little too much. 

Z: So they have individual energies?

E: Yes. 

Z: What other troll energies are there?

E: There's one that is like baby troll, that is just like a tender tiny baby punk troll, cause it kind of has a mullet that I want to nurture and then there are some that are real freaky. The ones with long ears are the freaky ones and then there are some that are trying to fit in with the rest of the world, but they don’t fit in. 

Z: In the troll world?

E: The human world. They have human outfits and are worker bees but they're like really trying to make it, but they are still trolls at heart. 

Z: That’s so sad.

E: Yeah. Most of them are pretty silly and happy in their own ways, but sometimes I get mad at them when they are staring at me. 

Z: Woah.

E: I'm just like you have to stop. Too much. 

Z: Do you turn them?

Eli Ana laughs.

E: Yeah. And the ones in the bathroom I’ve been thinking, I might have to move these. It’s starting to be a little too much. Not that they are too much, but just how I've placed them. I feel like the bathroom relies on them a lot because I hate that bathroom. It’s horrible, but when I put the trolls in there it felt better...the trolls help. But, that’s a lot of pressure. 

Z: Is it a completed collection?

E: For me this is not an active collection that I'm trying to put a lot of time into. I’m greedy with them. I kind of just expect them to be this thing that feeds me. 

At this point the ones that I have are collectables, cause they are not making them anymore. So if I wanted more of the same trolls it'd be really expensive. 

These are all Russ trolls because Russ Bary makes them and it turns out that Russ Bary is a fucking Zionist ass who funds all of this really violent bullshit. I organize with IJAN and we were doing this report on Zionist funders and I was doing all this research and I came across the Russ Bary foundation. I was like, Russ Bary? That sounds really familiar. And then I realized why it was familiar. It was startling. 

So I had to have a talk with all of my trolls to help them do some un-learning of their Zionist upbringing. It’s really important to me that my trolls understand that troll liberation is tied into everyone elses’...

Z: Woah.

E: I found out the other day that one of my friends also collects trolls. I freaked out. She collects wooden trolls. 

Z: So she has the ones you don’t like? Did you tell her that?

E: Yeah. 

E: But it was still pretty exciting. She's another Douala, she's my co-Douala and I know her pretty well...so I really freaked out when she said that and it was like at, we'd just been at a birth and went back to her parents to sleep and I saw these trolls on her bookshelf and I was like, what the fuck is this?

Z: You were drawn to each other and you both collect trolls? I love that. It’s like finding out you were in the same dance class in first grade. 

E: It made me feel really close to her. We have a date to share trolls collections.

Z: Maybe she's going to win you over with her troll collection.

E: I know I was jus thinking that. But, I also feel like it’s important to reclaim trolls cause everyone has such a negative connotation. There’s the whole internet trolls thing. Trolling someone is a really shitty thing to do and I'm like, that's just not fair because trolls are the most mystical magical creatures!

Did you see Box Trolls? I went with my sweetie. We went at like 6pm on a Friday night and it was us and a bunch of kids. The box trolls aren’t like my trolls but they're trolls and it was my most favorite movie. I was so excited. And they’re making a movie about trolls, about my trolls. 

Show Me Your Quarters

Z: How did your painted quarter collection begin?

J: I was in Portland working at a bakery, and I began to notice them in the cash register. I started wondering who paints these? That was 10 years ago. I want my collection to go to the top of this drawer.

(James scoops up a handful of quarters and then releases them.)

And I still wouldn’t have enough to display them the way I'd want to display them.

Z: How would you display them?

J: I want to display them in the spirit of—no, not in the spirit, just totally copying Felix Gonzalez Torres. They’d be in a fine art museum with white walls and wooden floors, piled in the corner and spilling down. Some would be buried. You wouldn't even know that they were painted—but you would assume. But I wouldn’t want people to actually take them like you were allowed to with Felix Gonzalez Torres’ shiny candy.

Z: Cause it’s money?

J: Not cause it’s money, because…it’s almost like it’s not money. This is one of my collections where I don’t only collect by myself. I tell people I collect painted quarters, and they bring them to me. I might not go to the Montclair Farmer’s Market for a whole month, and then Carol, from Twin Girls Farm will see me and immediately say I have quarters for you. And I'm like, Carol, this is three dollars! I try and give her money for them. It is a challenge to make her accept it. But, it is interesting that she is finding these things, in fact, maybe looking at every quarter they get wondering if this one is good enough for James' collection. People see the same excitement and wonder in it. Everyone knows when they find a good one. The interesting thing about this collection is that you can’t go to a store or anything and buy them. You know? You have to find them. 

(James digs through his closet and emerges holding a jar.) 

J: Oh, here is another collection. At first, it was just little bits of yarn from Emily's bits of toys and sweaters. One day I visited her at work, and there was like a garbage can full of scraps. I was like Oh my god!

Z: Did she work at a yarn store? 

J: Yeah. I kind of wish it was all just Emily's because I think it would be fun for her to be able to look through this and go, "oh, this is that project, or this is that" cause she had used it all and touched it all, but instead it just looks cool smashed into a jar. 

(James re-enters the closet and emerges with a large plastic bag.)

Z: What’s in there?

J: My plastic dinosaurs. Emily made me put them away. 

Z: How many do you have?

J: Probably one hundred. 

Z: Why did you have to put them away?

J: They made things look “cluttered.”

Z: If you were going to display the dinosaurs, how would you do it?

J: Maybe I would lay them out small to big, like stars or like a pyramid or triangle. When they were displayed in the house it was by kind—like all the ones with a spiky back would be in one area and all the brontosauruses would be in another area.

Z: What makes a good plastic dinosaur? 

J: I want it to be like a harder plastic, not rubbery soft and more than two paint colors. If it looks cheap out of the mold, if you can see the seam, that is bad. At the same time, I don’t love new ones because they are too good. I would rather just have it be some dinosaur that has already been used. 

Z: And the quarters?

J:I get excited when they are not just red because I have a lot of red ones. And I get excited when they are not just nail polish. There are a lot that are painted with nail polish…that is part of my theory on where they come from. People maybe go into whoever has nail polish, like Walgreens, and then they take a quarter out of their pocket to test it—to see if it has a nice color and spreads well, or something. So for me, exciting quarters are definitely with paint and double sided.

Z: Where do you think the red paint comes from? Curbs?

J: I have no idea. But, red is popular. Sharpie, too. Red and blue. I don’t know who does it. One day I wonder if I will take a whole bunch of quarters and spray paint them all, just for fun.

(James walks over to a wooden cupboard mounted on his bedroom wall.)

J:I call this my apartment building because everything makes just a little bit of sense to me in here. Like the giraffe and the giraffe eggs; this is Burt and Ernie's house and they have a picture of princess Di.

Z: So did the giraffe lay the eggs?

J: Right, giraffes are mammals...I guess it is not so over thought, but when I try and move things around it doesn’t really happen. I clean this out. I actually take everything out and bring it outside and use my blower because it’s so strong that all this gross black dust goes everywhere and then I put everything back in practically the same way. 

Z: What is that?

J: That’s a really gross collection that I feel embarrassed to talk about.  Do you have any idea what it is?

Z: Lint?

J: Yeah.

Z: From under your bed?

J: No.

Z: Belly button lint?

J: Yes, belly button lint. It’s disgusting. It is the grossest thing I collect. But, when I was a kid I collected my fingernails and my gum. So, I think that this is kind of mild. 

Z: When did you start collecting belly button lint?

J: I don’t really remember. Emily! (James calls to his partner in the other room) Do you think I did that in Portland?

E: Yeah. That is where it started. I told you I was going to make a pillow out of it.

J: But I was already doing it otherwise you never would have said that. 

E: No. I said that you should collect it, I think. 

J: You know, the belly button thing may have become more exciting after starting to take testosterone and then getting all this hair around my belly button...cause that is why you get belly button lint; your hair tickles your t-shirt and then it gathers. I don’t know if you have hair around your belly button?

Z: Not really.

J: Yeah Emily has maybe one and it does not collect lint.

Z: How many years of belly button lint is in there then?

J: I guess 8 or 9.

Z: It just seems like there should be more then. 

J: I'm not religious about it. I probably put only like 3-4 balls in there a month. But, I think for a while I was doing it everyday. Now I'll only do it if it is particularly large or colorful. There is often like a single curly hair in it, though, and I make an effort to hold onto the lint and pull that out...cause I don’t want it to look like a thing full of pubes...which my friend Emmett collects.

J: There was a really good show at the Yerba Buena that a guy did about his mom's collections, but it was different cause it was collections of stuff that very much said, I am poor or I used to be very poor. The collections were like socks that might come in handy down the line or little tiny pieces of soap that are leftover from the last piece of soap. People probably collected that type of stuff here when they got freaked out about wartime.

Z: How did that make you feel about your collecting?

J: Just, that there wasn’t any historical or cultural significance to my own collecting. It’s more based on being an appreciator of things. 

Z: You don’t feel like that is cultural?

J: Maybe. I wouldn't entirely trust someone who didn’t care about their belongings.

Z: And you get to organize. 

J: mhhm

Z: Is organizing reassuring to you?

J: Like the joy I get out if? Yeah, it’s usually cleaning and then organizing. Making everything fit. 

Z: Is there anything else you want to add about your collections?

(James walks into the living room and returns holding a tattered wallet.)

J: This is my other collection that people give me a lot of. So you know when you get your registration for your car, you get a little sticker with the year on it? There is this little castoff sticker next to it. Anyway, people give me these, and I put them on my wallet. My wallet is so gross now that they don’t even stick. They just fall off in my pocket. They look like they are melting. I think it’s kind of neat. Basically, there is this thing in someone's house that they are not throwing away because they think that I will be kind of excited to get it. And I will be. So that is cool...although I started getting a whole bunch when I worked at the farmer's market in the DMV parking lot. It was cheating. It was almost like painting your own quarters. 

Zoe: You're from Oklahoma?

Nike: Yea.

Z: And your mom is from?

N: Iowa/Illinois area. 

Z: And your dad is from?

N: India, well actually, at the time it was India but now it is Pakistan. He was born in Lehor. It was British colonies when he was born and so he lived through the independence of India. He's in his early 80s. They went just across the border to Kashmir and eventually ended up in Delhi. His father worked for a British bank and when they moved to Delhi, they basically went from having a car and driver and servants to having like a 3-bedroom apartment for 9 people but it was actually really good digs compared to other people who had no homes at all. My sister and I went to India in 2008 and we saw the apartment. 

Z: Do you speak multiple languages?

N: No. My dad was very much I'm going to be an American now. When my he came to the US he came on Fulbrite and he was at Old Mis in 1966-67...so not a good time to be not white. It was an odd placement. 

Z: Where do you identify ethnically then?

N: Well if asked to just pick one, I will say Indian. If given options I would say mixed race or I'd identify with both white and Indian. My Mom is very German and Swedish, farming stock, stoic hard working folks.

Z: Do you notice in either of those heritages a proclivity for collecting?

N: I don't know if collecting is what I would call it, but I have two bags of hand tatted lace that look exactly alike and one is from India and one is from Iowa and I have to label the bags, which family they are from because they look identical. They are from the same eras. If I didn’t keep them separate and labeled I would never know which was which.  

Z: Do you think there are any connections between queer culture and collecting?

N: Maybe not collecting so much as gathering things to ourselves. So maybe it is collecting of an object you can see and have some sort of connection to and then maybe it’s collecting friends, found family, but I think there's a way in which gathering things to us might be common across queers, some sort of sense of belonging. 

Z: Did you grow up Hindu?

N: A little. We would do Devali every year and we would do some other small things, but my dad was not super religious. Hinduism is kind of like Judeism where you can be lax and still sort of ok.

I did grow up with a lot of Hindu and Buddhist art in my home, religious art. My dad collects it and I have a small amount of it. I grew up knowing the stories and knowing the gods and goddesses and what they meant and symbolism behind things. My dad has quite a few almost relic like pieces of art. 

Z: So that's his collection? 

N: Yeah that's a lot of his collection that sort of stuff. I’ve inherited bits and pieces over time. 

Z: He's not overly religious, but appreciates the art?

N: He might be very religious in his own way, but never forced us to do anything and there just wasn’t a way to do it. We had to drive about two hours to find other Indian folks doing the Devali thing. We grew up in a place that was incredibly conservative and Christian so being outwardly different in any way was not OK. 

Z: Do you think that gave you more of an ability to be outwardly different? Did it make you comfortable with being different?

N: Yeah, it is both good and bad. I’m very accustomed to being an outsider, so I have a lot of observational qualities, but at the same time it’s harder for me to feel part of a group. 

Z: It seems like you had a very individual upbringing, because you had all of this culture but lived in this small-minded place. It's got to create a lot of interesting dynamics. 

N: YEAH. A lot of crazy dynamics. Like we stopped having people in our home because they were convinced that we were Satan worshippers. They just didn't understand the artwork…and Hindus use swastikas--turned differently--and my dad did Native American bead working as a hobby but he would do Hindu designs with it so we would have these pieces of artwork that he created and people would be like, “Why do you have a swastika in your home and why does it look like a piece of Native American art?"

Z: Do you feel like your collector-ness comes from your dad? 

N: Yes.

Z: What are your collections?

N: So…there is every fortune from every fortune cookie since I was seventeen. 

Z: They are all in this bottle?

N: Yeah. 

Z: Do you ever take them out?

N: I haven’t cause it's really hard to take them out. That's sort of the point of them being in the bottle. Every once in a while I take a stick and push them down a little further. Sometimes they are not ones I get out of a fortune cookie. Sometimes I find them places. Like if I find them on the street or something like that, then I feel like this is a fortune meant for me so I'll take it.

When I order Chinese food, I don’t pick the cookie. I make other people pick their cookies and then I take the one that's left. That way I feel more like fate has left me this one. 

Z: This is your bottle of fortunes, essentially.

N: Yeah and its gone with me from high school. It started when I went to Houston to visit somebody that I had a relationship with, of sorts. We went out for Chinese food and he told me to save the fortune that I got, and so I did and that started it. I took it as save all of them, so I saved all of them from that point on.

I also collect Chick publications. They are all written by this guy, Jack Chick. They’re little comic book morality tales. Essentially all of them end with the same thing, that you have to accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, or your going to hell. Like all of them. Some of them are in English and some of them are in Spanish. I think there might even be some in Chinese in there, but they are handed out all over the world. I don’t pay any money for them. I don’t seek them out. They have to be given to me or I have to find them. 

Z: Can you give me some examples of them being given to you or you finding them?

They hand them out at 16th street Bart. I've found them thrown on the sidewalk outside Polk Gulch which is a porn shop. They are really terrible. There is one about Dungeons and Dragons players that go to hell. They condemn Halloween. The devil's night. They condemn every other religious practice…even other Christian denominations like Catholicism.

Z: That seems like its kind of more promoting Halloween.

N: Yes! The point to me when I look at them is, look at all the shit I could do and then the only thing that I have to do before I die is say, “I accept Jesus Christ my lord and savior,” and all of that is wiped clean. I tell people all the time that if I die, the last words that I say will be, " I accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior" just to make sure I have all my bases covered. 

Those types of religious people are the types of people I grew up around and so to them it was very serious. I grew up in a really small town in Oklahoma. It was less than two thousand people but there were probably two dozen churches.  Methodist, Southern Baptist and Assembly of God…

Every summer there'd be these big youth revivals, which are like a recruiting center and they are pretty decent for a community where most of the people are working class or poor because they provide food and a place for kids to be. Our family was the only family that didn’t attend church. So, it was a big deal if folks could recruit us to go to the youth revivals. I found out from somebody else that the churches were offering a special prize if they could get my sister and I to come to their revivals. The prizes were like a candy bar or a happy meal or something tiny and terrible and hard to come by...like McDonalds was half an hour drive away from where I grew up, so it was sort of luxurious.

Revivals were basically pretty fun. It was games and activities and sometimes they'd take us roller-skating. You’ll make lots of God's eyes but you'll make those at camp anyway. I played along cause I like crafts. Towards the evening they'd have the actual revival part where we’d go from the youth center to the chapel where the youth pastor and the rest of the congregation would start with the "come to Jesus stuff." The Assembly of God, in particular, would do things that were humorous on purpose I felt, because they also believe if you giggle or react in an odd way that you were taken by the spirit and then they would pull you to the front and have this whole moment with you. It generally involved getting on your knees. It was really...kinky. 

Z: Did your sister and you find out at the same time that there was a special prize being offered?

N: I found out. I usually found out anything cause I’d be in the last stall in the bathroom and people wouldn’t notice. I would hear girls talking. For someone who is noticed a lot, I can often go unnoticed.

Z: And then you told your sister?

N: I told my whole family. I thought it was hilarious! My sister was devastated cause she wanted to have friends and be normal. We fought a lot because she was like "why can’t you just be normal?"

Z: What is exciting about Chick Tracts when you get a new one?

N: Some of it is where I find it. Some of it is like, Oh My God, I found this outside of the porn shop! I like the way people will pick me out to hand them to me. People are selective about who they hand them out to. And I'm so tickled when people make a point of handing one to me. You can see the sin all over me and you are saving me. They feel like they are doing a very good thing for me, so in some ways, I'm touched because I'm like you care about me!

The people who will just sort of randomly leave them places is also interesting to me. So you took out all of the Bart maps and replaced them all with Chick publications. What was the reasoning behind that? Nowadays they are not as ubiquitous. Maybe people have to pay for them. Maybe Jack Chick died. I’m not sure.

Z So chance is a big part of your collecting…of the chick publications and the fortunes…

N: Also, I collect single playing cards that I find on the street. They have very specific rules.

They have to be a single thing that is meant to be part of a greater whole. And they have to be alone. If I pick up a card and then I see another one later on the block, I’ll put down the card I picked up. I like the aspect of it being something that belongs to a set that is not in that set. I don’t really care what shape they are in. Some of them, I've literally peeled off the sidewalk. They are often sort of wet cause the world is a wet place. If it's clearly got piss or shit on it, I wont pick it up.  I put it in one particular pocket in my purse until it’s dry enough to the point that I feel that whatever's on it isn’t gross anymore. 

Some of these cards are not regular playing cards. There's one that has halt hungry angry lonely and tired on it. There are some flash cards, lots of playing cards, some Uno cards. There are a couple of Tarot cards. Some of them are religious tracts. There are a lot of dirty cards, an astounding number of naked cards in a variety of orientations so its not just naked ladies; there's naked anime-Oh my goodness, the things that I find! I’ve found them pretty much everywhere I’ve ever traveled. There’s an Apples to Apples card; there's a Magic: The Gathering card; there's a Star Wars game; there’s a goddess of truth card and children's matching games. I have mood cards; there's a card from a wine deck that teaches you about wine (but is also the 8 of spades); there's an old maid...some of them have a significant meaning when I've found them. I'd be like, wow. I actually keep the Strength card separate. I really like this one and I'm a Leo and it has a lion on it.

Z: Do you remember the first one you picked up?

N: I don’t think so. I started collecting them when I moved to SF, but I don’t remember the first one I picked up. Most of the other stuff, I sort of remember the first time, but the cards I don’t remember doing it. For a little while I was taking photographs of them when I picked them up and documenting where they were found, but it got too tedious and I realized that it just wasn’t fun for me to do all that work. And so I stopped. 

I thought about doing a project with them but then if I do something with them, then I have to stop collecting them because I'd want all of them to be in the project and I still find them every once in a while. Like I think there's a new one that I found up the block in front of JFK, I added it to the pile once it dried.

Z: Do you ever treat them like tarot or some kind of divination?

N: I’ve thought about it. There is a way the regular deck is made to match up with the tarot card deck. But I've never really looked it up and then thought about it like, how does this relate? When I find it on the street is it some sort of divination? There have been days and times where I've found heart cards, that to me felt like they had a special meaning to them, but I don’t have any sort of official way of reading it. 

Z: How often do you find them? There are easily 150 cards here. 

N: Sometimes I'll find them as often as once a week and sometimes I wont find them for months.

Z: Do you think you'll ever stop collecting any of your three collections?

N: I hope not. I think they're so easy. I've been doing them for years. 

Z: They're pretty contained. 

N: Yeah, so I can travel with them or take them different places. I don’t think I ever have to give up doing it and it's so thrilling cause I started collecting them before I traveled and then to find playing cards while I'm out in the world traveling is really fun. I know there's like a Bazillion of these that are from Asia and just the fact that I've picked them up in London, sort of gives me that thrill. 

Z: (pulls out the devil card form single cards)

N: When you find the devil card sitting all by its lonesome…

Niki chuckles.

N: They are small. They don't take up a lot of space, but they are large in their way.

Triena: I started collecting purses when I was like 18. I'm 48 now.

I worked at Bloomies. Cosmetics. I worked 15 years as a retail girl. And that's why I started dressing up. I noticed that the women that dressed up would get a different clientele. My thing was dressing up in my vintage clothes. I've got vintage jewelry. I've got vintage shoes. I've got a collection of vintage coats and brooches, but not as many as I have purses. I would carry a different purse everyday.

I would get the ladies, Oh I love your dress and then they'd come and shop with you because you dressed up. I'd have my brooch on, always wear my hair up. Oh what purse are you wearing today? Is that one of your mom's purses? Cause my mom would go shopping every now and again and find something and just mail me a box. I don’t have to dress up anymore. I'm a yoga teacher now.

Zoe: Did you have regular customers then?

T: Yeah, I had my customers that would come in once a month or once a week or I'd call them and say, Hey this new powder compact is in, would you like to come in and try it? or Let me just send it to your house. You built relationships with your clients. I worked for Estee Lauder for 6 years. I remember when I interviewed I said I want to work for Mac and the lady that interviewed me said, No you're an Estee Lauder girl.

Z: How diverse were her lines at that point?

T: It was pretty diverse when I started working. They knew they had to attract—we would joke about it, but it was serious, her clients were dying. I mean it was women that were her age and we knew we needed to get more clientele and they started coming out with different lines.

The purses are right here. 

Z: You have a whole purse room. 

T: When I was looking at the apartment, what sealed the deal was the closet. I thought, wow I can put my bags there. The lady that showed me the place said, Oh, that's a pantry for food and I said, Food? What do mean? I don't need that much food.

Z: Would you dress to the purse? or would the purse be an accent?

T: The purse would be an accent to the outfit. Or some days I would go, What do I want to rock today? 

Z: This is before online, would you ever buy something online?

T: No. I need to hold them, love them, touch ‘em. I can’t just...Oh this is one that was my brother-in-laws mom's. 

Some of them I bought for the clasp…I may need to start carrying my bags again. 

Z: Does your niece like to play in your purses?

T: I don’t let kids play in my purses. (Laughing.) NO. 

I looove this one (gucci bag). One of the makeup artists that I worked with at Estee Lauder, Bergita Andrinni, she one day said, Hey I have a bag that my mother-in-law gave me back in the early 60s and I don’t like it. I'm gonna bring it in for you. So I open up the bag and I look in and I was like, Bergita, I can't take this. It’s a vintage blue suede Gucci with the double GS. So needless to say, I don’t carry it that often.

I remember one night I went to like a fried Twinkie party and I walk in and I go, I can’t stay here, my bag is going to smell like fried Twinkies! So we had to leave. I am not kidding. I was like, OH, NO NO WE GOT TO GO.

Z: How did you move from doing cosmetics to yoga?

T: Probably 6 or 7 years into cosmetics, I remember standing there thinking, Oh, this can't be it.  Because it was always, at least one lady in the department that was 65+ with the orange lipstick…I just remember thinking, Oh, I don't want...bad knees, bad hips.

When we were growing up, my dad always taught us, work your job and work your passion. So I thought, What's my passion? So I went to a class at the Oakland Y, my first Vinyassa class and I thought, This is it. She announced a Teacher training class and I was in it two months later. 

So I took a leap of faith and started Yoga Love three years ago. Every year I'm like, Really we are still here? But it's something I love…something I love doing.

Z: What kind of Yoga is it?

T: It's all kinds: restorative, pre-natal, plus size, Vinyasa, slow flow. 

Z: Plus size?

T: Yeah, yeah. I talked to a lady last week she called, So I'm calling around to ask...do you have plus size yoga? I said, Yeah, Wednesdays at 7:30. She said, Wait, what? I said, Yeah, for like months and months. And she said, Well I'm a size 22, and I said, ok, and she started crying. She said, I went to a studio they didn’t know what to do with me so they just sort of ignored me and I felt like I shouldn’t be there.

You just have to know how to speak the language. Move your boobs out of the way. Move your belly out of the way. Some teachers are uncomfortable saying those things. Even my teachers will ask, what kind of special thing are you doing in there and I say, I'm just holding space. It’s my fastest growing class at the studio. 

Z: It kind of seems like there's a culture of, if you are "overweight" also you don't fit in exercise class. 

T: And that's where we all need to be! And some people do their cardio. I’m not a cardio girl cause I feel like strong muscles, strong bones, strong mind. 

I remember at the Y when a person with a little bit more meat on her bones would walk in you could tell other people were thinking, What is she doing here? Is she going to be ok? Can she do that pose? Don’t worry about her. Worry about you. It's a trip. We don’t think about it. 

Z: As you became a yoga teacher, did your style change?

T: OHMYGOD YEAH. I don’t wear makeup as much as I used to.

Z: Are those milk glass tea cups?

T: My godbrother gave them to me. He grew up in like, echo park. Parents were crazy wealthy and his mom passed away. He went to prison for like 15 years. He gets out and his Pop was like, come get her stuff, I'm going to throw it all away. So he gave me like silver trays. Just all kinds of weird stuff like, Oh sister you want these? And I use them at the studio, Yoga Love.

Z: Does everybody in your family collect something?

T: Maybe. My dad collected watches. My mom collects brooches. Good god. She's got a wall of brooches in her closet. They are beautiful. Like she would get into the signed ones. Bower and Weiss were two companies. She wears them all the time and hats. She wears a hat everyday. 

Z: It seems like you guys are style oriented. 

T: We are. We are. We love getting together. My mother’s birthday is Halloween, so we are all going on a cruise and I'm sure we are going to drag out some clothes for that. Like dinner will be over the top every night. I'm already thinking, I've got this gold sequin, gold lame dress that I need to wear...we all wear a purse. And you know one of us will be like, What do you want for that? What do you want to trade for that? It’s always the trade game.  

Z: You stay connected to the family through object and object relationships. 

T: Yeah. Yeah. But not in a hoardy way. We are not hoarders—which is interesting cause you would think as much like my mom has a collection of bells and I mean she's got over 100, like way over 100 and at a certain point, she stopped.

There’s this cartoon…I don’t remember the name of, it was Dotty the dog, Montgomery the Moose and Portia the Porcupine. We all have at least one toy or a stuffed animal. My mom has Dotty (I named my Chihuahua Dotty). My sister has Montgomery the Moose and my little sister has Portia. I have Woolma the Lamb. She'd be a fun tattoo. I've had this since I don’t know when…probably had this over 30 years. 

Here's our thing to, when people die in our family the deal is…like when my great grandmother died--my great grandmother died when she was 99 and she had vases-like vases and vases and the deal was, her children could go in first and get the things they wanted. They could get one or two things for each of their kids and then the grandkids could go in, but it was not a free for all. It was only the kids that were allowed to go in. So the same thing happened when my grandmother died. My mom said, Ok, only her children can go in.

Z: Is your father still alive?

T: No, he passed away like 10 years ago.

My Dad was really like a hot fiery temper, but as he grew older he mellowed out. A Lot. Completely different man. My parents were married for 42 years and I remember I asked my mom, How was that? Cause like, he cheated, he was an alcoholic for a while—and my mom said, You know, I would do it all over again for the last three years. The last three years were the sweetest. All of us were really afraid of him. He was just, if you would ask him something, he would mumble, Papa what did you say? And he would yell. So we all got really good at interpreting the mumbles. He either wanted coffee or a cigarette, so the best thing you could do, you would light a cigarette from the stove and take him a cup of coffee and just go out with both.

When my parents decided to retire, we were in the bay area and my mom's mom was still alive and lived in San Bernardino. And eventually my mom said, Sell the house, come and live in Bakersfield. My dad and my grandmother were really good friends towards the end of their lives. He would go over everyday and they would just hangout in the garden and drink coffee. No more cigarettes. He had stopped. I think the doctor said, You keep smoking you're gonna die. Hypertension. And I mean eventually he died because of hypertension but that at least slowed the process down. 

When my siblings had kids, there was no babysitter. There was no asking my mother. She would say, go ask your father. So he would babysit. And his thing was, Are their diapers clean? Make sure their diapers are clean. He would change the boy babies. He would not change the girl babies. And he would have like gloves on and an apron on and it was almost like he was trying to catch a football. It was so funny. My mother said he didn’t change one diaper when we were kids. Why would he change a diaper? He had a job. That was his thing. He provided. My mom didn’t work. She did later. 

Z: Does your brother take after him?

T: No. My brother is in prison right now. I have one brother and one god brother. But the god brother is a god brother because he was friends with my brother in prison. It’s really like this interesting culture; you know you become friends with one or two people that got your back. So if you don’t have money your brother's got you. You don't have cigarettes to trade; your brother's got you. And I remember when my god brother got out he told my brother; I'll take care of everything. So we just started calling him our god brother, cause he's our brother in god.

I think he's been out maybe three years this month. He's the most interesting most generous guy. When he found out that I was opening the second Yoga Love, he called me, What do you need? I said, I dunno, I might need some cleaning supplies. I think he gave me trash bags in February of 2015. Last week was the first week I've had to buy trash bags.

Z: Is your twin here?

T: She lives in the bay area. What does she collect? She has some, you know we all...we all have some vintage bags—my twin and my mom. Like my mom, when I see her I don’t carry any bags she would ask for. I'm like, Oh I'm gonna be hanging out with her. Cause her thing is, she'll visit you at your house and she'll grab something and she'll leave a post-it note. She hasn't gotten me. She's gotten my twin. I wont leave her in the house alone. The first time she did it—my sister had a big bottle of Romance by Ralph Lauren the body lotion…so my mom came over with a little bottle and just pumped lotion. 

Z: I think that happens with Mom's where you’re like, Well, you are getting a little weird. 

T: And they don't even care. Whatever. Whatever lady. 

Z: How many siblings do you have then? 

T: I have five sisters and one brother. I'm a twin. We are fraternal. We've got like a cousin sister, we've got an adopted sister so it's like all these folks in there. It’s interesting. 

My great grandmother had a family reunion every New Year's day. We called her Mambie. She could make cakes. We would all go and it would be all day and it would be so many people that would just circulate in and I remember asking my mother the first time I can remember, How is she our cousin? All these people. I've got a cousin; I don't even know how we are related. I have no idea. If they sat down long enough with my grandmother, it would be a connection cause most of them are from Shreveport, Louisiana. Like, Remember, my mother married your grandmother's cousin... I have one or two double cousins. It's confusing.

Z: What kind of cakes did your Mambie make?

T: Oh, GAWWD. Pound cake was her thing. And Coconut cakes. They would be double-deckers and they would be...they were so good, she would lock them in the pantry, so at desert time, she would go in and get the cakes out. There was no leaving cakes out. No. No. No. No. No. You don't do that. And she would cut them.

At least one day out of the days we are together we all sit in our jams and just eat and play cards. We'll either play Uno or Phase ten. My mom has two peach trees. Two or Three of us will go down and make peach jam. And her deal-io is, if you want to take it home, you gotta buy your own jelly jars and you got to pitch in for the sugar and the pectin. I usually bring back a couple of dozen and I sell them. My students are always like, ok, So…when's the peach jam? We wake up like at 6 'clock in the morning—you should see us. It’s like the funniest thing, cause we go in the trees. We tie our hair up and we get enough for 2-3 batches at a time. My great-grandmother made jam. So we are using my great grandmother's recipe. There are two secret ingredients that we put in. 

Z: Where did she get her recipe?

T: Probably from her mother.

I used to collect apples. Maybe for like 10 years, apples. Most of them are from my mother. She had this apple bell for a very long time. (Removes apple bell from cupboard.)

Z: Did you leave a post-it? 

T: I think I took a photo and said, Hey I've got your apple. I love this one. I think my mother gave me most of the apples. So for a while I collected apples. Like my kitchen was APPLES. 

Z: What made that stop?

T: I just was like, I feel like I'm done collecting apples. I'm not putting anymore apple shit in my house.