When confronted with Patrick Miceli’s recent art installations–huge piles of fast-food paper cups–most viewers are stunned. “There’s the initial impression it makes,” Miceli says. “A certain immediate kind of visual gut response you get.”
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Miceli admits that trolling for cups has become a compulsion: “I can’t help but wake up at two in the morning and go out and pick up cups.” He says he’s often mistaken for a bum and has been harassed by obnoxious high school kids and weirdos. “It’s not my nature to dig in garbage cans. Like, this morning I was going through a garbage can–and there’s a rat sitting on it. I think twice about it, but at the same time I’m really caught up in the behavior. I also wouldn’t do this if I didn’t see the value in the cups. I really think there’s something quite wonderful about them. They are quite incredible.”
The cups–in all sizes and colors–are from McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Checkers, J.J. Peppers, Pizza Hut, White Hen Pantry, 7-Eleven. There are red Cokes and blue Pepsis, Super Big Gulps and Slurpees. Bags of them are stacked against the walls of Miceli’s studio, all the way to the ceiling. More bags are piled in the hallway. Boxes hold another 15,000 cups. “It’s like an anthropological research project–like a slice taken out of a particular neighborhood at a particular time,” he says. “You could do a survey and find out what people bought and used and what they liked more. If you dig up an archaeological site and find potsherds, you can decipher what people were doing in the culture. Here, you could make basic deductions about the habits of a Chicago neighborhood.”
The floor of Miceli’s studio is entirely taken up by boxes filled with over 20,000 of these small toys, sorted by color and gleaned from thrift stores, garage sales, and the street. He’ll make a “carpet” out of them later this month for a show in Indianapolis. “They end up being little tools of acculturation,” he says. “They teach our kids about gender identities, and they also promote this idea of consumerism.”
