07.31.2011
My seat mate poked my lap when I was riding the train home from Chicago.
She was taken off the train in the early hours of the morning.
Not for poking my lap, but for something else.
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I met the woman who was the baby that wore these 08.??.05
Made in Minnesota (I think)
handmade baby slippers
found in the trash August 2005
These baby slippers I submitted for "Art-i-facts: An Unconventional History of MCAD". The show is in conjunction with MCAD's (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) 125 anniversary. Kerry Morgan, the director of the MCAD gallery, asked alumni to submit a single object or expression that would best represent one's experience while in school.
When I moved to Minneapolis in August of 2005 it was to start the MFA program at MCAD. I had never been to Minneapolis before. Luckily I had met a really lovely woman named Megan earlier in the year in Vermont who lived in Minneapolis with her boyfriend. They were kind enough to let me sleep in there living room for a couple of weeks while I looked for a place to live. Other than Megan I didn't know anybody else in the city. I would bike around Lake Harriet for hours and then I would bike up and down the alleys looking in trash bins for stuff. I moved out to Minnesota with one suitcase so I was trying to find materials to work with in the studio and housewares. I found so much stuff. Most of it I didn't take, sometimes I would just look. I remember three trash bins from this time in particular: the wiglets/smutty book/giant Garfield head pillow, an empty dumpster except for a huge birthday party bag filled with baby sleepers and dresses, and an overflowing dumpster filled with the life items of a couple moving out of the country (where these slippers came from).
I had visited the dumpster once and didn't take anything because I was afraid it was someone's who had been evicted from their apartment and I didn't want to take what could very well still belong to someone. But I decided to go back the next day because there was so much. This time a woman came up to me in the alley so I asked her if she knew what was going on. She said that the stuff was hers and that she and her partner were (and I assume still are) musicians and had decided to move to Mexico. They couldn't take much with them so they donated some things but still had to throw so much away. She said she would be very happy for me to take as much from the pile as I wanted. At this time I still was looking for a place to live so I couldn't take too much. I took the slippers, the woman's baby book, a notebook, and a blue cotton shift with strawberries embroidered on the yoke.
These slippers I keep pinned to the wall of my studio. I have always wanted to "do something" with them but have felt funny because in some ways I feel they are not mine to do anything with.
Art-i-facts: An Unconventional History of MCAD
August 26 – September 18, 2011
MCAD Second Floor Galleries
Exhibition reception: Friday, September 9, 6-8 p.m.
2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404
