Flag 07

CANTON (Stars)

Sunbanque Tanning Salon - Gloucester, Massachusetts

Overspray captured in a spray-tan booth.

FIELD (Stripes)

Cannon House + Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D.C.

Footprints gathered in multiple D.C. offices from Republican and Democratic members of Congress, lobbyists and aides.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section of the flag was created from overspray in a spray tanning booth in Gloucester, Massachusetts. I drove to the salon expecting them to deny my request to leave a piece of plywood in one of their booths. I walked in to the building with a lot of negative assumptions: that they wouldn’t be interested, that they wouldn’t care about supporting an art project and that they would dismiss my request. I was totally incorrect. The woman at the desk patiently listened to my request and was incredibly accommodating. She said that she would be happy to help and that she had a customer scheduled for a session that afternoon. She even mentioned that she would try to stop the session (asking her customer to help her) part of the way through so that she could remove the plywood from the booth before the spray covered too much and started to run. She took the piece of plywood and told me that I could come back in a couple hours and it should be finished.

When I returned later that afternoon there was another woman working there. I explained to her what I was there for and she carefully brought me the plywood covered in the spray. It was really wet and the chemicals seemed to slow the drying process so I brought it home and left it on a shelf - checking it every couple of days for dryness. It took a couple weeks to completely dry.

The color of the spray changed over the course of drying. When I picked it up the spray was a copper color but by the time it dried it turned green.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

This section was created in multiple congressional offices in Washington D.C. It’s actually hard to get meetings with members of Congress unless you’re from their district. I live in Ed Markey’s district and I teach at Olin which is in Joe Kennedy’s so I was able to schedule times in both offices.

I went with my family to Joe Kennedy’s office for a meeting that I set up ahead of time. Things were running late on the House floor so we ended up waiting for a while in his office - all five of us sitting on the couch in his office entry waiting with a big piece of plywood. While we were waiting to meet with him we started talking with other people waiting in his office for meetings and asked them to add their footprints to the plywood. Multiple lobbyists and a recently retired Republican Senator were really excited about the project and gladly stepped on the plywood adding their marks to the project.

When it was time for our meeting with Joe Kennedy he invited us into his office. He listened to my description of the project and said he’d be happy to leave a footprint as well. We all talked for about 15 minutes about the project as well as the current state of U.S. politics and then left.

Our next stop was Ed Markey’s office. He wasn’t there but we met with one of his aides. While we were waiting for our meeting I asked some lobbyists who were also waiting to leave footprints. They agreed and added their footprints. We then met with Markey’s aide for about 45 minutes in a conference room. He was really excited about the project and rounded up a bunch of people from the office to meet us in the hall to add a footprint.

This section of the flag is really light as far as color. It’s hard to collect marks on flags in carpeted and very clean spaces. Congressional offices are pretty clean.