Week 15: '08 Garbage Truck

Happy Holidays from Daddy's Matchbox!

This week's theme was to revolve around a garbage truck -- a planned comparison of tossing out the illusions of commercialism at the holidays, enjoying the important things and the wonders of the mundane, and so on.

Now normally, the car pic is done by one of a group of talented friends who are skilled photographers, but this week's hectic pace didn't allow me to get my little toy garbage truck out to anyone, so I snapped it myself with my cellphone (hence the blurriness).

Watching me take the picture, Racer A (four years old), asked, "Can I bring out one of my cars and take a picture with your truck too?"

The request seemed harmless -- after all, it's digital, so it wouldn't be using actual film. "Sure," I said.

He paddled off to his room, and with little instruction, snapped off this:

Feeling inspired he paddled off again, to snap this: 

Which, after a few more paddlings off to his room, became this:








And eventually mutated into this:

And so on, expanding into:

and this:

 and this: 

 and of course this: 

Until by the end I had pictures of my feet, a floor mat, the computer, the pattern on my wife's pajama pants, and a variety of abstracts.

The culmination of this project was, as you would guess, a self portrait of the artist:

By this point, my original theme didn't feel punchy enough, and while I would not get to share the charming story of how I stood outside in the cold last week with all three kids, watching the garbage truck arrive, all of us waving to the workers, completely caught up in the moment of watching a big, noisy truck -- who am I to interfere with another artist's vision?

So instead of my usual metaphor, metaphor, play on words, pithy comment, wrap up, I am tossing it all out to go with a pictorial photo log by a guest artist, my own Racer A.

Have a Wonderful, Wonderful Holiday Season!!!

While Cheerios is a registered trademark of General Mills, I am in no way sponsored by that or any other company including Mattel, Inc., so these are not paid product placements.  But listen guys, I am currently unemployed, so if you want to talk...

The featured car is number 66 of 100 of the Matchbox 2010 lineup and is part of their City Action collection. I really like this highly detailed, fun little replica.