http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5097

“This concept was made for an International Competition of Architecture, for the Stockholm Public Library. The project was conceived by Armel Neouze, Jacques Gelez and myself, and we entered the image into the competition after creating more than 1,000 renders.” (May, 2009)

I personally do a significant pruning at least once or twice a year. It feels good. After five years I’ve now cut almost to the bone and (with the exception of some more DVDs that I want to cut) I have only the stuff that I really, really like. The stuff that I will read or watch or listen to over and over again.

One of the added benefits is that I have completely re-evaluated my tastes in the arts. Now that I no longer make as many impulse purchases, I’ve had to decide just what kind of stuff I like enough to actually buy. Novelty and cutting-edge no longer appeal to me because I learned from my pruning experiences that the stuff that was so different and exciting and edgy and of-the-moment when it originally came out is the stuff that ages the worst (and is most superficial) and is easiest to get rid of later on down the road. So I’ve become much more classical in my tastes. This is a good thing. It allowed me to see how superficial so many modern works are, and how truly lasting the classical works are.

In order to prevent myself from relapsing into my old habits (an easy thing to do at first, but also easy to avoid after a certain period of time), I’ve physically limited the amount of space that allocate to the three things that I collect (movies, music, and books): one full-size bookcase dedicated for prose books; one half-size bookcase dedicated for graphic novels and art books; a certain number of leather disc binders for DVDs; and a certain amount of data storage space on my iPod for music. Once that space is filled, I make myself get rid of older stuff before adding new stuff to the collection (or I just decided that I can do without the newer stuff). It’s pretty liberating.

Another thing that I do is that I simply give away all the stuff that I want to get rid of. Selling stuff and making at least a partial return on your investment is all well and good, but I’ve found that if the primary goal is to actually prune the stuff from my life, the most important thing is to just get it out of the house. Keeping stuff around until someone buys it means that you still have it and it still remains a temptation for relapse. So unless you actually need the money you would get from selling the stuff, I would just write it off as a loss and give it away (to libraries, friends, used book stores).

Regarding comix, I realized many years ago that the graphic novel format was the wave of the future, so I simply stopped buying monthly periodicals (or “floppies” or “pamphlets”) and gave away more than 99% of the ones that I owned. No more long boxes (if stuff is packed away in a box, I’ve found that I rarely (if ever) go back to re-read it–it’s just a method for accumulating stuff). I now have only about a dozen individual floppies in my collection, and those I keep on my shelf with the rest of my books. Another reason that I gave up monthly periodicals is that not buying stuff on a regular schedule (monthly, weekly) means fewer trips to the store which means less temptation to buy stuff that I don’t really want. And once you break yourself of the habit it’s amazing how much more clearly you can see the crap for what it is and easily avoid it.

Good luck on your project. Happy pruning!

Oh, and to call back to Scott’s comment, when I was going back through things I realized that for some reason I have two copies of Alpha Flight #12. So when I sold the set, I was able to keep my original copy. Now I have one to give to my son some day.