Spring is in the air and that means it’s time for you do some spring cleaning. Open those closets and get rid of all those outfits that are so last year, throw out those freezer-burnt Tupperware containers of leftovers you will never reheat, and clean both behind and under the couch this time. A pleasant surprise may be lurking in one of those cobwebby corners of your home. You’ll be amazed by what some dusting and sweeping can do to your cluttered life.

Art trashed or trash?

Ask artist Leslie Rech how she feels about spring cleaning. Since February, Rech had amassed the shells of over 300 eggs as part of her installation “Anna Dropped Her Basket,” created for Columbia, South Carolina’s exhibition Accessibility Columbia: Making History on Main Street. The work, which included a handmade dress and the eggshells, was installed in an alley off Main Street on April 2. The following day, a City Center Partnership employee who serves as member of the city’s “clean team” dismantled and discarded the installation.

“This is about the worst thing that’s happened in my career,” Rech, an associate professor at South Carolina State University, told Jeffrey Day, reporter for www.thestate.com, South Carolina’s Home Page. “For it to happen to me in my hometown is shocking.”

The 300 eggs whose shells were incorporated in “Anna Dropped Her Basket” were used to make baked goods for residents of a local women’s shelter. Rech’s installation intended to comment on homelessness and mental illness.

Lorri-Ann Carter, press representative for City Center Partnership, a sponsor of the exhibition, implied the cleanup was “an honest mistake.” According to Carter, if the installation could not withstand weather conditions or if it was not labeled as art, the employee who removed the work cannot be blamed.
Accessibility Columbia: Making History on Main Street runs through May 7, without Rech’s work.

May 2006