Hand and Foot

Two Lost Soles. We walked past these shoes every day from our parked car as we headed over to the Encaustic conference last June in Beverly, MA. The last day there, I took these photos.

This photo by Randall Louis Hamilton

Recently I came across an announcement about an art installation at Berry College Moon Galleries titled The Hand and Foot Show a collaborative effort by artists Randall Louis Hamilton (The One Shoe Diaries) and Linda Bill Shirley (FOUND GLOVES.) Both artists are from Pensacola. Made me think of the lost soles we walked across every morning heading to the first meeting of the day at the Encaustic conference last summer in Beverly, MA.
Taking to the road after hurricane Ivan hit Pensacola and demolished his house, Randall began to notice random shoes along side the road. With an artist's eye and sensibility, he began to photograph these finds creating a collection just for fun.

Some of Linda's gloves. Picture from the The Hand and Foot Show official web site.

Linda Bill Shirley says " I probably picked up my first glove sometime in the late 1980s. As an artist, for many years 'found objects' had intrigued me and I often incorporated them into my artwork. However, I continued to see random discarded gloves..."

What I like about this project, The Hand and Foot Show, isn't so much the display even though that must be very interesting. (I didn't see it.) It is the simple idea of just finding something interesting and saving it, keeping it, collecting, marking it---a souvenir, a memory marker. An unintentional witness. Evidence. The collection expands and becomes more than than a sum of its parts. It is another thing altogether.

Click here to see the CNN interview video.