My 2008-2009 public installation piece The Providence Register of Lost and Discarded Objects was inspired by a desire to explore the power of context within the public arena. It was early Spring in Providence and, with my visual navigation of neighborhood sidewalks no longer focused on detecting layers of ice and snow, I noticed a plethora of discarded objects. It seemed to me that the majority of these items were not “trash,” but rather orphaned possessions of value.
Providence is a city of historic plaques which purport to make a particular house more significant than its neighbor. With The Providence Register of Lost and Discarded Objects I borrowed the authority of this visual language to reframe these found objects as something of monumental importance. I permanently replaced each discarded object with a self-made engraved plaque bearing the object’s name and date of retrieval accredited to The Providence Register of Lost and Discarded Objects. With no further explanation as to the reason for this interpretive reframing of an expendable object, The Providence Register of Lost and Discarded Objects prompts the passerby to confront his/her own habitual interpretations of objects found in their everyday physical surroundings.
