While Wendy Waszut-Barrett is recovering from travel and catching up on current projects. She is reposting a few early installments from “Tales from a Scenic Artist and Scholar Acquiring: The Fort Scott Scottish Rite Scenery for the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center.” Here is her twentieth post from March 5, 2017.
Part 20: Little Boxes
Discoveries in loft above the Fort Scott Scottish Rite stage prompted an extensive search of the area. Soon, I was crawling through the dirt and peering into a two-feet deep gap along the studio floor where we discovered the paintbrush. It quickly became apparent to my crew that this was not a case of “finders keepers,” as had been the case with the remainder of trash piles scattered throughout the scenery collection with every new item. These would be part of an exhibit at the entrance of theatre in the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center. They were wonderful companion pieces to the scenery acquisition.
In the same spot from where we discovered the scenic brush, colorful pieces of wood began to emerge. I immediately identified these slats as pieces from dry pigment boxes. The crew looked at me in puzzlement every time I added a colorful wooden slat to my pile. Occasionally they asked, “Are you taking THAT back to Minnesota too!?!” Their queries were understandable as most of my finds resembled broken bits of wood, in the dim light. Although each pigment box remnant was covered in filth there were still traces of the original colors.
All the while we pulled up scraps of wood, I kept thinking of the folk song “Little Boxes” and Malvina Reynold’s lyrics:
“There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.”
Some boxes even included the stenciled shipping labels. The dry pigment had been shipped to “Sosman and Landis c/o the Scottish Rite Fort Scott, Kansas.” For me, this was a smoking gun!
To be continued…
