My cupholder vitrine.

I was writing about ‘vitrines’ where an artist tells a story using a small glass case filled with intimate objects. I thought I’d do one myself so that you can see what I meant.

I cleared out the cupholder in my car and here are the random objects I found there;

 

Bottom left is a spatter of tin solder that I found on the ground after some work was done at my last ever workplace.

Just above that is a small quartz pebble I picked up on holiday on the North York Moors some years ago.

On the right of the pebble is a shell I picked up on a day out on the south coast near Newhaven two years ago.

At the top is a bit of a mystery. I picked it up on a pavement in Staines – it’s made of plastic resin. I think it’s a by-product of a manufacturing process, rather like an artist or a decorator who scrapes the paint off his or her brushes building up the residue into a solid coloured block. I’m guessing it came from making objects out of fibreglass resin, but I could be wrong.

There you have it, some snapshots of my life over a couple of years before I fell ill.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)