(Forever Young)
Anonymous
Found 07/2007, Texas Thrift (I35 near 51st)

In preserving this photo of the timeless boy band ‘NSYNC in granite veneer Formica,  the anonymous decoupage artist creates a loving portrait of a young girl, perhaps seen through the eyes of her adult self. The false rock surface creates a sense of the eternal (for what symbolizes changelessness like stone?) yet may gently laugh at the crafted image of a boy band mugging for the camera, itself a thin facade.

The crafting of the piece suggests youthful exuberance: the panel and the photograph itself are cut with a rough edge, then finished with metallic paint pen and glitter-glue: a child’s tools and technique to immortalize a band that, by its nature, is a fleeting fancy, but one that only needs to last as long as the artist persona’s childhood—itself none to long.