This gift-giving season, the awkward, unwanted and inappropriate are being rescued from the trash heap by four young artists who recently opened a museum of bad gifts at a gallery on Ronsevals Ave.
Stephanie Avery, Shari Kasman, Martin Reiss and Sean Martindale came up with the idea as a tongue-in-cheek way to answer the question that comes up every year around this time: What do we do with the stuff we never ask? Given by someone we never liked, it now sits in a dark corner, never to be found again?
Their answer: hang it on the wall, and let the people enjoy it.
“A bad gift is different for everyone—it's a subjective thing,” Kasman says. “One man's bad gift is another man's gem.”
Kasman said she and her collaborators recently were trying to decide what to do with their Roncesvalles Avenue gallery space and decided to dedicate it to something everyone appreciates about this time of year: gift giving.
Their twist? Anti-gifting, or, “the emotional and cultural clutter left behind by compulsive gift-giving, feelings of disconnection, and a strange attraction to unwanted items,” the group said in a media statement. .
“The museum explores the rituals of giving and taking and the discomfort of the 'stuff' we never ask for.”
Kasman says her group put the word out to friends and colleagues to find the worst gifts they've received over the years.
Some were loaned, some were given to galleries. Others were used as inspiration for local artists who tried to take those old coal lumps and transform them into real art forms.
Curating the museum wasn't easy, though, Kasman says.
“One issue is that people often throw these things away,” she said. “And then there's this element of 'Could the person giving it to me figure out it's here?'
“Some people told me it's okay that it's on the show because the person who gave it to me is dead.”
The result is a truly eclectic collection, including:
- A rubber hippo that stomps like a duck.
- A wine bottle made from a horse's hoof.
- A cookbook for one, presented to the newlyweds.
And for those visitors who want to participate but have thrown out their own worst gift, Kasman says the exhibit will be interactive, with a station that allows people to draw a hideous gift from memory, and then hang it on the wall.
Another station, the Imaginarium, offers craft supplies to visitors who have brought their own nightmare gifts, which can then be used to rethink and improve upon the original gift.
That's what sculptor and gallery visitor Andy Fisher did. Her own worst gift was a Cabbage Patch doll that a “friend” had recreated using odd found parts and given to her.
The Frankensteinish monstrosity, tastefully reframed, now hangs in the museum.
“There are bad gifts that are so bad they're good,” says Fisher. “They're the ones I enjoy the most.”
Kasman admits that some may see her “muse” as ungrateful. But he rejects that idea.
“It's all in good fun,” she says.
Finally, the exhibits will all be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the Daily Bread Food Bank, “so a bad gift can find a good home and a good outcome,” she says.
Museum of Bad Gifts opens Dec. 26 and runs through Jan. 5 at the North Gallery, 420 Roncesvalles Ave.
