Flag 15

CANTON (Stars)

Myopia Hunt Club - Wenham, Massachusetts

Footprints made by a father and son playing tennis on the “Members Only” club clay courts.

FIELD (Stripes)

DPW Transfer Station - Rockport, Massachusetts

Leaves and dirt gathered from trespassing in the “Brush and Yard Waste” pile at the town dump.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section of the flag was created on a clay tennis court at Myopia Hunt Club. Myopia is a country club that has tennis courts, paddleball courts, a golf course and also features one of the oldest continually running polo fields in the nation. It’s very exclusive. We went to one of the polo matches and then “snuck” onto the grounds to try to find someplace to gather marks for a flag.

I originally wanted to get marks from golfers but after brainstorming with one of the people working at the golf shop we realized that the place was too manicured to find any good areas to get one of the flag sections “dirty”. Finally we found the clay tennis courts and decided that would be the best area to gather marks. There were a couple of guys playing tennis and I asked if they would mind stepping on the wood while they played. It turned out to be pretty slippery so the second player just left footprints on the board rather than stepping on it while he was moving. They were super nice and excited to help out with the project.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

To make this section of the flag I had to jump a barrier and trespass at the Rockport town dump. I used to take my son to the town dump every morning after dropping off his siblings at school. We would park the car and watch the backhoe move trash into the dumpsters. Since then the town has cracked down on out-of-town access to the dump/yard waste areas. I don’t live in Rockport so am no longer able to access the space without a town dump sticker on my car, but I love places like this where you can clearly see the infrastructure working and thought it a good candidate for a flag section so decided I would try to talk my way in.

I drove up to the gate into the dump and explained that I wasn’t using the facilities - I just wanted to collect some footprints for an art project. The person at the gate said, “You can’t come in if you don’t have a sticker.” I explained again that I wasn’t going to throw anything out just get some footprints and asked if he might be able to let me in for that. He just stared at me and kept repeating, “You can’t come in if you don’t have a sticker.” I thought it interesting that over the course of this flag project it has been easier for me to get access to exclusive clubs, national monuments, politicians’ offices, even people’s homes than to get access to a town dump.

So, I drove half way out of the dump, pulled my car over, jumped the barrier and ran up to the brush waste pile and smashed the plywood into the pile.