Flag 01

CANTON (Stars)

Dyke March - Boston, Massachusetts

Footprints from people walking in a “non-commercial, intersectional, and fundamentally grassroots alternative to Boston’s Pride celebration”.

FIELD (Stripes)

Automobile Salvage Yard - Gloucester Massachusetts

Footprints from workers at a scrap metal and auto salvage yard.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section of the flag was created at the Dyke March in Boston. Hadleigh Nunes was working as a research assistant with me in my lab and I asked her to take a couple wood sections and gather marks. I told her she could gather marks from wherever she wanted. We discussed that for the flags I was looking for things that were interesting both in content (associated with people and places relevant to American identity) as well as form (things that would produce marks that were interesting looking and visually differentiated from marks on other flags).

Hadleigh asked people to step on the plywood in the street during the march. She said it was an Interesting experience for her because she’s fairly introverted, but everyone at the march was willing and gracious. She said she ended up enjoying the experience more than she expected because the people she encountered really got into it and were up for participating in an art project even though they didn’t know anything about the project.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

This field was created at a salvage yard just down the road from my house. We know the owner. He’s come and taken away scrap metal from our house multiple times and our family has gone to his yard to look for car parts or to dump clean fill after digging out our basement.

Based on the bumper stickers on his trucks it’s probably safe to say that we have very different political views. He can be kind of harsh when you first talk to him - all business - but our family all really likes him. He’s actually always been really nice once you get past the the initial gruff interaction.

I went to the yard with my youngest son and his friend. The owner fluctuated between yelling at the guys he had working for him and checking to see that the young boys were safe and didn’t get cut on anything as we walked between the piled up cars. It was a really funny interaction.

I asked if we could leave a piece of plywood there for a while to build up some marks under a rusty engine they were working on. “I don’t have time for this! Just do it now.” he said. So we walked back to a garage where he had a couple guys working under a car. He called them out and they all stepped on the plywood leaving huge greasy boot marks.

“Are we done?” he asked.