I ONCE WAS LOST
I like to glean things. Finding things when I am out and about that intrigue me; bringing them home to be used in a collage or a mixed media piece some day. New York City, by the way, is a great place to glean stuff.
I took a collage class several years ago, after moving back to Virginia, and our teacher urged us to glean. Shortly after the course was over, I was walking down the street and found a glove on the ground and picked it up. I wondered: "Who did this glove belong to? What is their story? What were they doing when their glove decided to go down a different path?"
When I see a lone glove, I always envision someone in my mind's eye. Who do you think wore this glove?
Not long afterwards, I found another glove. So I picked that one up, too. And I wondered about that glove’s owner and what their story was. And so began a decade’s-long journey of finding gloves, wherever I roamed. Up and down the East Coast, across the U.S., out West when I lived there, even traveling in Europe.
I found gloves in all kinds of places. I found them on sidewalks, in the street, in parking lots, on window ledges, at the post office, in shopping malls, outside Washington National’s Ballpark in DC, even in the ladies room of the Museum of Modern Art in NY.
I found kid’s mittens and gloves. Elegant ladies’ and men’s gloves. Crabbers gloves. Workmen’s gloves. Gardening gloves. Sporting gloves. Fingerless gloves. Some in good condition. Some caked in dirt. Others chewed up, ripped up, run over.
I found leather gloves, cloth gloves, wool gloves, fleece gloves, microfiber gloves, rubber gloves. A loofah mitt. The whole gamut.
Eventually, they all were put into clear, plastic shoeboxes and stored in my art closet…to do something with someday.
Plastic shoeboxes are a great way to squirrel away found treasures until they are ready to become art.
That day came after I moved to the Northern Neck of Virginia. I began unpacking the boxes of gloves and was curious. How many gloves did I have? So I began counting. Turns out I had 97 gloves. I thought: “Wow! Now I need to find three more gloves to make it 100.”
And the Universe heard me. I found even more than 3 gloves, in no time at all. Now was the time to get started on making them into a piece of art. I began by tacking them all up on an 8 foot square “Art Wall” in our shop/studio, in a big circle, as if they were all holding hands together.
Some gloves were just too heavy to be tacked up at angles, so I tacked them up vertically at the bottom of the circle. I stepped back and saw that I had created A Tree of Life. I was so excited. I took photos of the Art Wall and thought about transferring it all onto a canvas.
My husband Todd built an 8 ft. x 8 ft. stretcher and we stretched canvas over it. Then we propped it up vertically onto wooden supports, with casters underneath, so we could move the canvas around. From there, we strung thin rope up, down and across the center line of the canvas, so I had center points as reference. I quickly discovered the rope provided a method to lay out the gloves on the canvas, prior to sewing them on. So we added eye hooks and more rope spaced evenly across the canvas. With a lot of clothespins, I could tuck a glove behind the rope, move it until I found the right position for it, and temporarily secure it. I placed all the gloves onto the canvas in this way.
Arranging gloves using our rope and clothespin system, which let me try different color combinations and placements, then work on the "body language," before sewing them down.
Next came the sewing part. It became a 2-person operation that was not only collaborative, but meditative. We put on music and as Todd and I fed the needle back and forth through the gloves and the canvas, we thought of different positions, different “body language” for the gloves, so they could say certain things to the viewer. Like “I Love You” in American Sign Language. Or Peace. Or give the Vulcan Salute, from Star Trek.
We started sewing on the tree trunk and the outer circle, then we moved inwards towards the middle. The white fluffy mitten, found at MOMA’s ladies room, was the last glove we sewed on.
I decided to leave the duck canvas background as is, and let the gloves do all the work visually. So when it came time to sign the work, I was loathe to write on the canvas. And I sat and thought about this for a good, long while.
One day, the Universe showed me the solution. We were out of town, driving along a four-lane divided highway. Todd spotted a glove. He said: “Jean, there’s a glove. Do you want to pick it up?” For a second or two, I thought: “No, I have all the gloves I need,” but some small, little voice inside said: “Yes, let’s pick it up!” So we turned around and Todd dodged traffic to fetch the glove. When he brought it back to me, I was blown away. There on the glove, was a sewn-on label that read: “Name” at the top, with space to write in below.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed. We brought the glove home, I signed it, and we put it onto the lower righthand side of the circle of gloves. It was the perfect way to sign my piece. Then I titled it: “I Once Was Lost.”
Todd made the stretcher and helped stretch the canvas. Got it to stand vertically. Then helped me sew on the gloves. His biggest contributions were encouraging me to make it in the first place (since it was going to be huge) and finding the glove I used to sign the piece; left of Todd.
One day, not long after it was complete, a neighbor stopped by, who’d seen the work in progress. He had been out riding his bike and saw a glove out on the road, thought of me, and picked it up. He was dropping it by. Other people who’ve known about my glove project tell me that they think of me when they see an abandoned glove and wonder: “Should I pick this up for Jean? Or not?”
Our friend Charlie recently emailed me that he saw a glove while he was out in his neighborhood and attached a picture. I replied: “Can you pick it up? I am now accepting donations.” So he returned to the spot and it was still there. A few days later, a little pink Minnie Mouse glove arrived in the mail. What a find!!!
Contributions from neighbors and friends who've seen "I Once Was Lost" and thought of me. They will make their way onto a new found glove project someday.
Gloves seem to be showing up again and I am picking them up. I had a little bit of a hiatus after I reached my one-hundred-glove goal. (There are actually 103 gloves on “I Once Was Lost.”) So it seems that I am now working on a new found-glove project. Why just a few weeks ago, while on vacation in Santa Fe, my first time there since we moved back East, I found a glove on Canyon Road, one of Santa Fe's most well known gallery-lined streets!
What the next glove project will become is a mystery to me today, but if I am patient, I know I will find my way to the answer.