Found Art on Staten Island
Corroding ⚙️

With such a hefty toll to cross into Staten Island, I like to make ‘er pay up–justify the antenna money grab with an enriching stop even if the Island is not my final destination. Such was the case when my friend and I embarked upon a road trip to several abandoned sites in the Scranton area of Pennsylvania. But the pit stop lasted the entire day.

It was totally my fault. I kind of love showing people cool things I’ve found on Staten Island. It is like revealing that the person they dismissed as a total jerk is secretly quite cool and very weird… the good weird. Starting at the metal scrap yard in Rossville. The unassuming junkyard off Arthur Kill Road is a gallery of found art, a museum of industry, a garden of weathering metals that I can’t get enough of. It’s like a the messy playroom of some little boy–trucks, trains, various utilitarian parts–but bigger than me, interactive.

I waxed poetic about combustion engines throughout the rest of the day. The combustion engine… there goes the neighborhood.

Those tanks are the reason I discovered this place, and they were next on our list. But first we explored the junkyard all the way to the water’s edge. So much texture to capture. And so many trucks to climb into.

It’s the worn and weathered pastel I find so pretty in my abandoned explorations. I am the weirdest kind of girly.

These pictures look so much better bigger. Hmmm, a photo book project? I will start with creating a new category here on my blog: Junkyard.

Getting in this truck…

The piles were each their own sculpture, the 7 art elements in action–line, color, shape, form, value, space, and texture. My high school summary: Failed gym, took AP Art.

I’d rather be here than a gallery.

Pretty wires. I wanted to play with them when I was a kid. I remember exploring the back of my neighborhood deli with my Cap’N Crunch Detective Crunch Squad badge (OMG, Ebay has it!) and discovering a mess of kinky color wires jutting from some unidentified mechanical thing. The still frame is pretty sharp in my memory. Kid urban exploration.

Still playing after all these years

On the Charleston border now, I got up close and personal with the abandoned L.N.G. Tanks, which are not a designer mall now as S.I. Live reported in 2015. Not demolished. Though the future’s uncertain and the end is always near. (My high school summary, part 2: Jim Morrison and the romanticizing of non-conformity, risk-taking behavior and macro-dosing.)

This is the best mall ever! Sorry. This found art is too big to demolished.

Since we were nearby, I showed her the boats, a maritime gallery of more decaying metal. But there were so many people down there on the sinking bog, disrupting this beautiful bird’s day. We left for the other side of the Island for some more weirdness. Stay tuned for the next installment of the Staten Island Day Trip.