Check Your Look

In the spring of 2009, I was invited to participate in Main Street Concord's Vacant Storefront Display Iniative. In August 2009, I installed Check Your Look, an artwork that's also a game. Viewers are invited to complete the piece by aligning their own reflections with the figures in the paintings. Buildings across the street, as well as the sky, are reflected there, too, completing a city-scape behind the painted figures. I wanted the window itself to be part of the piece. It’s fun, but it’s also about how no artwork is really complete without the viewer. Only the person playing can see how their own reflection aligns with one of the figures at a particular moment. So each person’s experience of the work is completely unique.

The idea is based on a game I used to play as a teenager, walking through downtown Rochester, N.Y. My friends and I went by a little men’s clothing store on the way to school everyday. They had these half-mannequins in the window, dressed in jackets and ties, with no heads. We would line up our reflections with the mannequins and ‘try on’ the clothes in the window. Now, years later, the game has become the basis for this installation.