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Clare is the curator of the Museum Of Everyday Life, which lives in a barn on Route 16, about eight miles from Glover, Vermont, population 2000. Over the years, the Museum of Everyday Life has given us the toothbrush, the mirror, bells and whistles–celebrations of objects we use everyday in our unglamorous everyday lives. This year’s exhibit features the knot. It’s not quite finished, because as Clare was preparing the exhibit, she was also working her other job as a nurse at a small rural hospital, in the middle of a pandemic.
She showed me the exhibit, which is not quite done but which is already strange and brilliant, and we talked about knots, and about her work as a nurse, in a pandemic and beyond…
THANK YOU to Bianca Giaever for her insights on this show. She just launched a podcast and it’s really frickin good…
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Images from the new exhibit:
another classic piece, erica, about one of the classiest people, clare dolan, and institutions, the mel.
sadly this program is the closest i am going to get to the new exhibit, but it is so rich in poetry and humanism it will help feed me for this stay-at-home summer.
Wow! the whole thing is interesting but that moment when after talking about the swing Clare sits on it and we hear the beams creak… We were in a museum but suddenly a whole mighty barn-cathedral appears. Beautiful! Looking for a specific ear-beauty word here, can’t find it.
This was a treasure to listen to! So touching, honest and insightful on so many levels. Thank you.
Hi Erica—
Clare speaks with a professional’s eloquent authority about the challenges of nursing, and with an artist’s visionary eloquence about the meaningful intricacies of knots—and you weave these two seeming disparities together with an ultimate authoritative artistic vision. What a work of art this is!
Becalmed with awe,
Thomas
Where to begin? Knots! One of my big loves. Clare, if you haven’t seen it already here is a film to go with your show: The Awful Backlash — Robert Nelson (untangling fishing line)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXmwp-lgJaQ My father sought out and was sought out by experimental film makers in the 50s and 60s…he brought this film home one night and I will never forget it. Dad, having been an Eagle Scout and avid backpacker/camper, also instilled in me a deep admiration of the functionality of knots. I keep images of a few favorites on my fridge in order to jog my memory.
Thank you for your deep reflection on the subject, it has so many twists and turns and best of all, a near infinite number of practical applications. Where art and practicality mesh is where my heart is.
Erica, what a great show!
…..and, of course, Clare’s deeply humanitarian take on her patients’ struggles with COVID19, touching to the core.
Annie G.