Monthly
Statement:
December
2005
Greetings from SoapSliverland,
The month has been a true soap EXTRAVAGANZA! It began on 12/2
when I checked my email and found the following message:
"Hello, I am a writer for the Washington Post
Sunday Source. I was forwarded your email requesting soap
for an art project, and was quite intrigued. I am interested
in writing a short piece for our section on your quest. If
you wouldn't mind I would like to send you questions about
the project."
Thanks,
Justin
Whoooo hoo hoooo! How did that happen? I found out from writer
Justin Rude that my buddy Joab had forwarded the email I had
sent him requesting soap slivers to his distribution list, which
by chance included an editor for the Washington Post. Fifteen
minutes of fame. Magic!!!
So Justin Rude, interviewed me and I asked him to put my email
at the end of the article so people with soap slivers to spare
could contact me. I got my first email from a donor before I
had even seen the article. It was from Cherie who had a few
slivers and also was considering donating her grandparents’
collection of hotel soaps from around the world that she had
inherited. I suppose she’s still thinking about it. Then
came Colleen with an offer of soap and some comments on the
idea of an accumulation project. Next was Donna Savage from
Kensington, MD with scanned images of exquisite French milled
soap with rose petals, which I have since received by mail.
(Thank-you, Donna). On the heels of her email came one from
Lorraine Rose from Washington DC who not only has a pink soap
sliver, but in fact, she has an entirely pink house, both interior
and exterior that she says is “kind of Mediterranean looking”.
She calls it La Villa Rosa and she invited me to stop by. See
this is what I love about art---it can draw people into a conversation,
and from there, so much good can happen! I hope Pink Lorraine
becomes a regular donor, as pink is scarce in my collection.
After Lorraine came Zelda with a lovely guest soap sliver that
has a decal with a columbine and a daisy printed on it—truly
a one-of-a-kind that Zelda will be able to recognize in the
final piece. It was also the first one to arrive by mail. (Thank
you, Zelda.) Then Nancy Winchester of Rockville, MD emailed:
“I have some pretty pieces…deep lavender, a deep
yellow, and nice light peridot green. The yellow and lavender
are nice shapes, too.” These have since arrived and the
colors are truly lovely, but because they were so thin, they
suffered a little in the postal system’s grinding machines.
I may rewet them and smooth the edges a bit, and all but one
of the 7 slivers is quite usable. I’ll just have to warn
people to use more padding or a small box for thin slivers.
(Thank-you, Nancy.) A person by the name of Rian enthusiastically
offered soap in exotic colors like tie-dye and black, and I
await receiving them. Then came Sara Rothman of Silver Springs
who has some unused guest soaps in the shape of blue swans and
green ducks that she wanted to send. She said: “when I
moved into my house the main bathroom had wallpaper with pink
swans--and my friends teased me about it. So I bought the swans
to kind of expand the joke.” I told her I would give the
soaps to people I could trust to use them and return the slivers,
which I assume will retain some degree of resemblance to waterfowl.
So the collection is growing as a result of the fine article
Justin Rude wrote in the Washington Post (Many thanks, Justin!)
Even this morning, almost 2 weeks after the article ran, I got
an email from Sheldon Goldthwait of Bar Harbor, Maine who mentioned
reading about it in the Bangor Daily News. This means the wire
service picked up the article whooo hooo hooo!!!! Anyway, Sheldon
had funny story:
"When my mother died in 1996 we discovered
a whole treasure trove of HALF bars of Irish Spring soap.
We have two possible explanations:
1. She had difficulty holding a smaller bar
2. She had a notion that the soap lost its effectiveness as
it got smaller.
We still have the soap. It has been a wedding shower gift
for all the women in or entering our family since. All of
them were undeterred by our strange family sense of humor
and got married anyway."
So I offer a sudsy toast to Ruth Sanders Goldthwait, whose spirit
lives on in her half used bars of Irish Spring! (I wonder if
she thought of them as half used or half remaining?)
To see what other publications picked up the story, I “googled”
myself, and to my surprise, in addition to the Bangor Daily
News, the article was picked up by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
and St. Augustine.com, an online version of the St. Augustine
Record. So perhaps some slivers from Florida, Ohio, and Maine
will come my way. Not Bad!
Of all the emails I received as a result of the Washington Post
story, only 1 was from an idiot. His name is Jerry. It read:
"Hi Jill,
I saw your article in Washington Post recently and would like
to ask you a question.
Do you know anyone who is interested in earning a $10,000.00
monthly income in 90 days with only a 1 time out of pocket
expense of $1000.00? If your answer is maybe or yes..."
Well, the answer, Jerry, is NO. And just to teach you a little
lesson about inappropriate email etiquette, I am going to share
the personal cell phone number you gave me with our viewing
audience. So, my friends, Jerry can be personally reached at
703 298-6401 (I checked.) You should say the following when
he picks up: “Jerry, you are a naughty scamming weasel!”
and hang up. If he hears this simple admonition from several
different voices, I think he might get the message. But please,
nothing worse, and don’t mention my name, or I’ll
have to wash your mouth out with prison soap!
Another less obnoxious but equally unhelpful message was from
a man named Dave Davis, who wrote:
"…years ago I discovered & actually
had it published in a local environmental book, That if you
will let your soap bar get down to a thin piece, Then you
can get a new bar of soap & use both in your shower or
bath, So that both are softened up. Then simply stick the
sliver onto the new bar & let it dry until the next shower
and you will never waste any soap. You may have to do this
a couple of times.
Of course that would be the end of your artistry if everyone
found this out. I won't tell anyone else."
Dave Davis
Well Mr. Dave Davis, the Great Depression is over and everybody
already has “found this out” anyway. We’ve
known this for so long it’s been encrypted in a gene sequence
located on the right anterior branch of Chromosome 23 in human
DNA. And by the way, your name is redundant.
Dave, please forgive me. I’m not really that mean (except
to Jerry and he deserves it.) I just wanted to try out my David
Spade imitation and I see that I really have some work to do—it’s
not ready for prime time. Actually, Dave began his email with
the following:
“Jill, I do hope that you get lots of soap scraps for
your projects, But…”
So Dave, I appreciate your wishes for my success and hope you
have a sense of humor.
The third emailer that was not immediately forthcoming with
soap will remain a mystery to us for the time being. I am waiting
to see if it is a REALLY interesting story or a hoax. At present,
I await further communication from her. I will incorporate those
developments into my January statement as the situation develops.
But as all of these results of the Post article were coming
to pass, another equally major event was unfolding with the
showering inmates of the Milwaukee County Prison. (See October
and November statements.) I received the 5 lb. box of inmate
soap mailed by Jeff, the Deputy Sheriff there. I must laud this
man’s courage at every opportunity because in helping
my cause, he subjects himself to some major ribbing from inmates
and staff alike. As quoted from a recent email from Jeff: “They
ALL think I'm nuts…. I have been lovingly been granted
the unofficial title of "Ass Soap Deputy". (Hey Jeff---is
it Ok if I find a way to work this quote into each future monthly
statement? I have a soft spot in my sense of humor for all scatological
references.)
FYI, 5 lbs. of prisoner soap slivers will fit in a container
roughly the size of a shoebox.
Upon opening it, I found several transparent bags, which, to
my horror, contained not only soap, but also PUBES GALORE!!!!
What should I expect though, it gets dredged from the prison
shower floor. It took me a week to work up the nerve to “process”
the shipment. A couple minutes soak of small batches in full-strength
bleach, and a cold-water rinse’n shuffle in a dollar store
colander to release the floating pubes. Double rubber gloves
or not, let me tell you, I was severely skeeved. And amidst
the soap and pubes there were a few unexpected finds as well---four
wrappers from Jolly Rancher candies, and one of those plastic
utensils called “sporks” that have the bowl of a
spoon, but tines of a fork. This one had the handle cut off
and this clever disguise made it a perfect chameleon amidst
the white soap-lets. It occurred to me that “sporking”
might be some kind of illicit activity that takes place in prison
showers, and I wondered how the Jolly Ranchers might’ve
fit into the ritual. But now I’m thinking I oughta report
the spork to Jeff, the Deputy Sheriff, just to make sure. All
the prison soaps were white except for 4 small slivers that
were the blue-greenish tint of Zest. Since Deputy Jeff told
me that the soap that is given to the prisoners free of charge
is always white, and that any other color, had to be bought
by the inmates at the prison’s canteen, I became curious
about the inmate(s) who either had a heightened sense of visual
or olfactory aesthetics, or perhaps just sensitive skin. At
any rate, after a thorough washing, I laid the soap out in a
single layer over a couple of mesh screens I trash picked last
summer. Then I left them with a fan and heater blowing on them
for a couple of days, praying that they’d be dry in time
for me to pack for the show in Brooklyn.
And they were.
The show was a fabulous success—hats off to OLB! I was
composing my piece on the spot at the gallery late the night
before the show opened, and the only thing I knew for sure was
that I wanted to keep the prison soap separate from the free
people’s soap. What emerged was a mosaic-like outer frame
of inmate soap, and within this frame I set up “taxonomies”
of soap grouped by shape and size. One group consisted of oval,
flower petal like shapes, another group contained long, narrow
specimens. A third group held medium-sized square shaped pieces,
a fourth contained strange, irregular shapes, and yet another
group had small, sharp-edged bits that I thought looked like
Native American arrowheads. All in all, I thought the piece
looked like a collection of artifacts in a black lined museum
case. So much for its first incarnation.
And to conclude this exceptionally fruitful month of soap collecting,
thanks to Nancy Amis of Baltimore who arrived like a proper
dinner guest bearing several amber colored translucent shards;
to Maida Milone of Villanova, PA for the lovely specimen of
pink Dove; to John J. Trause of Wood-Ridge, NJ for several specimens
including one pink translucent bit of soap that originated from
the rain-forests of Brazil; to Kitty Caparella of Philadelphia,
who contributed some fine whites and yellows, to the anonymous
donors of Artists’ Housing Incorporated, where I live;
and last, but never least to Dave Warren of Collingswood, New
Jersey who arrived at my birthday party with the perfect gift
for the girl who has it all---a baggie full of white and butterscotch
yellow soap slivers, one of which he lovingly sculpted into
a tubular, macaroni-like shape.
Washington Post article available here.
Process:
I will be accumulating remnants of used bars of soap by soliciting
contributions through networks of friends and acquaintances.
I am also looking into receiving donations through local hotels
and collection boxes set up in various locales.
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