I found a shoe in the road on my way to college – it was a small child’s gym shoe. It looked like a scene of a crime, a car accident perhaps. I guess the only crime was that this child had dropped the shoe whilst crossing the road. It was still there when I returned in the evening so I took it home. I thought about why it had come to be there, what had happened leading up to that point and the consequences of it’s loss. There were remnants of cut grass inside the shoe. I decided to take a cast of the shoe – it wasn’t the visual image of the outside of the shoe but more the impression, the index, what had been left inside the shoe – the memory of it rather than it’s cover.
I was really pleased with the cast, it has a ghost like quality to it due to the plaster. Embedded in the cast are traces of where that shoe has been, gravel, grass and fluff.
I have so many odd socks in my house – like I always find just one shoe on the beach, in the road, there are always odd socks. Where do all their partners go!? I experimented with casting a few odd socks I had. Again, the casting picked up loads of the sock, the texture, the remnants as well as picking up some of the colour from inside the sock. I’m not quite sure of these yet. Perhaps due to the timing of Christmas they remind me of stockings hanging on a fireplace.
I really want to cast some more shoes – I would like to try casting in wax too. I have an idea of a room full of shoes – but would like to start by casting a nucleur family of shoes – and then rearranging, changing and adding to it.
- plaster casts of nuclear family
- lady, man, x2 kids and a dog
- mix it up and encourage people to create a family from a selection available – make it interactive
- inclusiveness of all people’s traces – wheelchairs, amputees, same sex