We get them in the mail every week: little blue cards displaying the faces of lost children. But do we ever really look at them? If you live in an apartment building, a stack of lost kids accumulates next to the mailbox until someone takes it upon themselves to trash the poor things. But artist Ann Trask decided to adopt. Her exhibition “All Around the Neighborhood,” presented jointly through Neighborhood Center Inc. and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, cleverly employs the discards as well as pictures off milk cartons to stitch together garments ย children’s clothes. Thread patterns seem to suggest the image of a map, over which the faces of missing children hover like ghosts. The effect is both threatening and sweet. The viewer is smacked with an awareness of danger, while Trask’s memorializing is somewhat comforting. And imagine if a kid were actually found as a result. While that may not have been part of Trask’s conception, it could encourage us to spend a few more seconds at the mailbox.
May 28-June 26
This article appears in May 25-31, 2006.