The Art of QWERTY

“To live is to leave traces.”  Walter Benjamin

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to bid on and ‘win’ a wonderful piece of art.  The young artist was a person devoted to looking at the plastic waste we humans produce and turning it into something of wonder and beauty.

Sarah Frost is an American artist working in multi media and typically produces large installations.  She has created works in New York, London, France, and her home town of St Louis, MO.  Her most notable works are made with discarded computer pieces ranging from keyboards to mouse parts to the tangle of miscellaneous electrical cords we all have collected somewhere in our basements or garages over the past 30 plus years.

When you see her wall installations of keyboard components, they look like lovely mosaics.  Your first thought will be, “Oh, those are keys.” And, your second thought will be, “I could have done that.”

But, you didn’t.

You didn’t even think of it.

Sarah did.

Something of fascination for me is that she dismantles the keys from the keyboard and has bins of them that she draws from, all separated by size, color, shape. The keys are not cleaned first. They all carry traces of use. Ewww–you know what I mean. Keyboards get dirty. I clean mine periodically but I know that the ick on them is from my own fingers and no one else uses my computers. Sarah’s take on the ‘ick’ factor is in keeping with her overall philosophy of repurposing and celebrating used computer parts. In her own words:

“Each key has a unique history and bears the imprint of the thousands of taps by countless users.”

I would encourage you to take a look at the beauty of Sarah’s installations. There are several on line locations where you can view her work. http://www.blog.evajuliet.com/2012/12/artist-sarah-frost.html is good and so is Sarah’s own website which includes some of her other ‘recycled’ works on exhibit: http://www.sarahfrost.info/

I hope you find her work as interesting as I do and enjoy discovering the art of QWERTY.