Main description:

In this memoir, Sascha Feinstein recounts life with his father, Sam Feinstein, who was both a brilliant
artist and a hoarder of monumental proportions. He collected only uncollectible objects-artifacts that
required him to give them importance-and at the time of his death in 2003, his hoarding had fundamentally
destroyed all three of his large homes. Despite this, Sam Feinstein was a remarkable painter and art teacher. This strange double helix of creativity and destruction guides these collage-like reflections. Like his students' canvases-paintings inspired by enormous still lifes constructed from the world's refuse-this book incorporates myriad sources in order to create a more layered experience for the reader. The final result is the depiction of a painter with the highest artistic ideals who nevertheless left behind an incalculable amount of physical and emotional wreckage.

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Wisteria
New Ventures
Notes in a Time of War
Monsters among Trees
Children of Paradise
Cheap Seats
Eternal Machinery
Exotic Dennis
Unrecognized Prophets
Stop-Time: An Interlude
Temples of Inscription
Vegetable Chow Mein Pizza
Sacred Ground
Urushiol
Validating Rhyme
Boats and Starships
Fallen Basilica
Patterns of Organic Energy
Still Life with Raccoon
Punishment
Fire Dance