Kid’s Can, 2018
Screen Print Ink on Paper, Acrylic paint on Paper
4” x 3.75” x 3.75”
A very vague childhood memory is of a field trip to a cannery on the Baltimore harbor, and of being in an assembly line, making grey or pink oysters out of clay and canning them. Each of us got to keep a can. My most vivid memory is the odd rattle of only a few clay oysters in a metal can. The fakeness of the oysters struck me as odd and I loved it. I think this might be the origin story.
In 2018, I found that the Baltimore Museum of Industry has been running this children’s field trip program since the early 1990s. They shipped me a can, but the cans are now all made of paper with aquarium glass inside.
It’s not exactly how I remembered it and so I made myself a Kid’s Can that suits me now.