Abandoned T-Shirt Project

Two Kinds of Abandoned T-Shirts

It's the end of Week 1 of this project, and I've found 3 T-shirts while walking in north Berkeley.

Shirts #1 & #2

These two T-shirts were jumbled in a pile of swimsuits, towels, and shirts of all kinds that were spilling out of a broken plastic bag on the curb on a residential side street. I call this the Intentionally Abandoned find--T-shirts that were placed out on purpose. In this case the purpose was unclear, however, because their condition made them unwearable--holes at the underarms and very worn neck ribbings.

Stats: One shirt was purple and the other a faded gray/green--both were printed with pseudo-Southwest designs. No manufacturer labels. Weights: 6.375 and 6.625 ounces.

 

Shirt #3

The third T-shirt was found on the curb near a bus stop on a busy street.

It had been there a while, that was obvious, but the weather has been dry so the shirt wasn't deeply dirty. This was a Simply Abandoned shirt--left behind by accident or just discarded because it was no longer useful. It's a small size, although not a child's size--I'm guessing that someone came home without his shirt and got in trouble with mom. The edges of this shirt were very worn.

Stats: Faded deep gray with a motorcyclist design. The tag was cut out. Weight: 5 ounces.

A Question: Are There Places Where There Are No Abandoned T-Shirts?

A number of people have told me that they have never seen clothing on the streets in their neighborhoods, whereas I see garments and bedding of all sorts everywhere I go. For the record, I live on an arterial on the edge of an upper middle class neighborhood in Berkeley, California--I walk my dog every day, which puts me in a good position to find things. I would postulate that college towns are good hunting grounds for abandoned T-shirts; certainly Berkeley, even the upscale neighborhoods, has a funky shabbiness that contrasts strongly with gated suburban communities. But I've found garments in nice, well-groomed areas of Seattle as well.

I am looking forward to seeing whether geographical, sociological, or seasonal patterns show up in this project.

The Abandoned T-Shirt Project: The Beginning

I have noticed that Berkeley residents love to place things out on the curb that they think someone else could use: chairs, monitors, dishes, shoes, books, clothing.... This abundance of goods made me think about the material things in our lives, where they come from and where they end up. The more I thought about global trade, sweatshops, resource depletion, overabundance, and the related horsemen of environmental and cultural despair, the more I wanted to use textiles and knitting to make some sort of artistic statement.

You can already see that I do a lot of thinking.

In particular, I thought about the humble t-shirt, a simple and supremely comfortable garment--we've all got a drawer full of them, right? We take them for granted, treating them rather cavalierly yet they have an alarming global impact.

I've decided to attempt an art project based on abandoned t-shirts. You've seen them, huddled and dusty alongside the freeway, left lonely under the bleechers, forgotten on the bus stop bench. The "Wild Castoff T-Shirt" (as my friend Linda calls it, "the single shirt on a lonely road or in an environment that tells a story"). From this Earth Day to the next I will be gathering up t-shirts, washing them, cutting them into strips, and knitting with them. I'm not entirely sure what direction this knitting will take! I'm going to keep track of where the t-shirts were found, taking photos if possible, preparing a map, gathering whatever statistics catch my attention--weight, manufacturer, color....

And I'd love your help. If you happen upon a t-shirt, please send it to me along with information about where you found it--and a photo if you are the kind of person who knows how to use your cell phone camera. Just leave a comment and I'll send you my contact information.

This might be silly or it might be emotionally meaningful--I confess that I am unsure where my conviction that this is worth doing comes from, but I feel a need to forge ahead.

I'll keep you posted here!