Excavating History Projects 2008 and 2009
Preserve, Alive, Remember
antique glass jars, paint, medals, toy vending bubbles, honeysuckle vine
2008
How should we think of these Historic Houses? As examples of preserved architecture? Or as spaces where culture continues to be produced and engaged? Or are they tourist/souvenir sites?
Honeysuckle vine is one of the design motifs of the Pleasant Home. In this piece, an old canning jar, etched with the word "Preserve", contains a dried honeysuckle vine. Next to it is a museum vitrine, also containing dried honeysuckle, etched with 'Preserve". A cutting from a living vine, planted the same year the house was built, is in a vase marked 'Alive". And an antique cookie jar marked "remember' holds souvenir coins stamped with the abstracted honeysuckle motif inside the plastic bubbles used in vending machines.