Category: Projects

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Holding On with the ClothesPin Project

Alt txt Clothespins painted with fingerprints, surrounded by rope
We say “I’ve got your back” in times of trouble. Yet when threatened, we often close ranks to protect “our own.” We join together against great threats, yet divide when conquered by internal division. We are served by love, and enslaved by distrust. We Carry The Rope Which Binds Us.

I originated the idea for and proposed The ClothesPin Project to the small arts organization I help lead.

The Corvallis Art Guild faced cancellation of its fifty-ninth yearly August Clothesline Sale of Art due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State guidelines prohibited large outdoor gatherings, and we knew social and physical distancing would prevent sales of heart-focused, hand-made artworks. One year short of its 60th run, there was no clear path through the gathering darkness, and no apparent alternative to a depressing announcement and another X on the summer’s event calendar. What to do?

During the organization’s first membership meeting on Zoom in early May, 2020, I floated the idea of a project that would pivot from the events’ Clothesline brand to focus on oversized, yet inexpensive clothespins. I attached the concept of Holding On, which felt like both a universal experience of adapting to a pandemic, and the perfect description of what clothespins do to clotheslines. I challenged members to create art which explored their experiences of holding on through times of great challenge.

The idea was enthusiastically supported, and the Guild ran with the project.

Three months later, more than thirty members of the group had produced more than eighty pieces of art, an online gallery, and a crowded exhibit in a downtown storefront window known for its display of locally created art.

Photo triptych Silent Semaphore
Isolation can intensify human bonds, even while making them more difficult. Ropes can measure distance, even while pulling us together. How can we signal our feelings from afar? Dirty laundry can semaphore in silence.

While helping to coordinate the project, I completed the two of my half-dozen concepts shown above. I also designed and constructed the fixtures on which members’ clothespins were exhibited, and photographed many members’ 2D pieces for the online gallery.

Where to see it: We Carry The Rope Which Binds Us and Silent Semaphore are on display in the “Holding On” show, in the Footwise Shoes window at 301 SW Madison Avenue in Corvallis, Oregon through August 26, 2020. The online gallery is here.

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Big Tiny, followup

  • Each 4×4 art piece is contained within a custom package for protection in transit.
  • This one folds and closes with velcro.
  • John Friedlander (b. 1960) “Imagine I Don’t Exist,” February, 2020 Rusted corrugated steel, wire, blue plastic tarp w Sharpie, toned art paper w photo 4x4x.75 inches
  • Paul Gareau, age 58 when this photo was taken in 1980 in Hartford, Connecticut by Tom Simon. Used by permission.

“Imagine I Don’t Exist,” is made with old corrugated steel, blue plastic tarp, and a photo my old friend Tom Simon took in 1980. It sold as a gift for someone who had lived “invisibly” and would recognize the piece as an effort to see and testify to his experience. 

Tom and I edited a college newspaper together in 1980. He did a story on “transits,” the term of art at the time for people in transit between places or stages of life. Paul Gareau was 58, living with a variety of mental health and substance challenges, working in the wood yard and bedding down at night at the Open Hearth Mission in Hartford Connecticut. He agreed to be interviewed and photographed by Tom, and Tom gave me permission to use that image.

Growing up, I remember being advised when visiting NYC from the ‘burbs of CT, “don’t look at the homeless people on the streets.” Apparently the tender sensibilities of that era equated homelessness with visually obvious medical conditions or other evidence of individual uniqueness it was considered impolite to comment on – or even to see. Even now, we often look away from the results of systemic economic imbalance and imagine there isn’t a problem because we “don’t see it.” Racism? “I don’t see color.” etc.

But pesky facts keep tripping us up. Today’s homelessness is more visible than in 1980, and typically younger, less white, and more family-scale. Root causes have evolved and worsened, but being “invisible” behind a curtain of denial persists. And in case you haven’t gotten the memo, racism also still exists… if you don’t see it, you’re not paying attention.

Fortunately, organizations like Community Outreach, Inc. are working for change, and imagining a time when the problem no longer exists at the scale we all suffer with today. 

I am so pleased all three of my donations quickly benefitted COI by finding homes.

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Big Tiny

Tiny is big these days.  

Houses, stages, burgers, horses… everything that used to be better when bigger is now more chic when shrunk. (Notably, not egos, alas.) 

Dancing on a four feet square and eighteen inches high stage sounds like a terrible idea to me, a non-dancer. Creating four inch square art to auction at the dance performance— a fundraiser for Community Outreach, Inc., a Corvallis organization which helps people help themselves lead healthy and productive lives – sounded like a much safer challenge. 

This project’s constraints strictly focus intention. Works don’t exceed 4 x 4 x 1.5 inches. The theme of the works is Home, which relates to COI’s mission. Each piece will be offered for no less than $10. Those who can should pay more, to support the benefit organization. 

John Friedlander (b. 1960) Where the Heart Is, February, 2020
Galvanized steel, alcohol ink, wire 4×4 inches

Considering the physical expression of dance on a profoundly limited stage made me think about homes with strict size limits and, by extension, material and complexity constraints. 

I produced three pieces, exploring the pleasures of a safe, secure home against the reality that not every home is safe or secure. My process also surfaced thoughts about fragility and danger, and how each relates to both the materials I chose, and to life itself.

  • John Friedlander (b. 1960) Imagine I Don’t Exist, February, 2020 Rusted corrugated steel, wire, blue plastic tarp w Sharpie, toned art paper w photo 4x4x.75 inches
  • Rusted corrugated steel, wire, blue plastic tarp w Sharpie, paper tape, toned art paper w photo 4x4x.75 inches

Late in the process, I realized each piece needed a home of its own: a safe place for the journey from studio to display to final destination. The solution was at hand: the cardboard box I’d already deconstructed for one of the pieces. The detailed packages I made turned out to be integral to each piece— out of sight, yet critical to the stability of the pieces’ “lived experience.”

  • Each 4×4 art piece is contained within a custom package for protection in transit.
  • A small handmade cardboard box
    Every home is unique.
  • We all need homes to suit our souls.

Tiny does not mean insignificant. While I enjoy these pieces’ material simplicity, and the lightness with which they will travel on their journey, I hope they will start big conversations about what “home” really means to those who don’t — or can’t — take home for granted. 

Great news! All three pieces sold during the first night of the two-evening event. One of them will make its new home in Natal, South Africa – wow!