Patriots

Most children who’ve incurred the wrath of their parents are threatened with a lump of coal of their stockings at Christmas.

For Patriots wideout Kendrick Bourne, it was… a trash can?

“I have a funny one. My parents gave me and my brothers a trash can for Christmas. That was the worst,” Bourne told MassLive's Nick O'Malley about an unforgettable gift. “We needed it, though. We actually needed it for our room. So it was good.”

“Did your parents have a heart? That’s the next question,” one other reporter asked the veteran.

“Hardly,” replied Bourne. “We had to clean our room. I think they sent us a signal. It was the best gift, a gift we needed. But probably the worst gift at the same time.”

Bourne added that the gift didn’t include any extras or perks – comparable to gifts being put within the bin.

As blunt as his gift for criticizing the state of his bedroom was, Bourne still sees it as a fond memory – one which transcends the standard clichés of gifts like cleats, jerseys and other football gear.

“Crazy childhood,” Bourne said, laughing. “I love my parents. Shout out loud – Hello, Mom and Dad. I love you.”

Several of Bourne's teammates gave fairly standard answers when asked about gifts during the holidays.

“The best Christmas present I ever received? “Oh man, this is tough,” Hunter Henry said. “When I was young, I was a big jersey guy. I remember standing up and getting a Shaquille O'Neal jersey when I was young, when I was a huge basketball fan. I just remember being excited about the Shaquille O’Neal jersey.”

“Unlike Hunter, I would probably say probably an electric motorcycle,” Drake Maye added. “I got an electric motorcycle that I rode around the neighborhood.”

Plastic bags, straws from perfume bottles and shoelaces – these are belongings you don't normally associate with high art. But why not? Many recognized artists in the fashionable canon draw inspiration from humble materials, from Tim Noble and Sue Webster's sculptures constructed from household trash and stuffed animals to Charles Long's cigarette butts and bird droppings recovered from the LA River.

“The Poetics of Dimensions,” a brand new group exhibition in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, celebrates the clever reuse of such common objects—in lots of cases, plain old trash. Hosted by Ghanaian-American curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, the exhibition brings together nearly a dozen artists who work with materials reminiscent of recycled leather, cosmetic containers and single-use plastic.

Anthony Akinbola, a Brooklyn artist who has exhibited on the Guggenheim, weaves colourful abstract tapestries out of durags, the hair coverings you may buy for 19 cents on Amazon. Moffat Takadiwa, who lives in Zimbabwe, uses post-consumer waste that Western countries dump in his country's scrapyards to create intricate sculptures from toothpaste tubes, computer keyboards and spray cans.

You might just walk away from this with a brand new hesitation about throwing things within the trash.

Details: The exhibition runs Wednesday through Sunday through February 23, 2025 on the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, 345 Montgomery St., San Francisco; Free admission, icasf.org

Originally published: October 30, 2024 at 6:30 am PDT