More about the lost soles connection to lost souls

As some of you may know my Volume 2 is titled Friends, Family and Lost Soles. I chose the title because I write a lot of stories about my friends and family and also pay tribute to several people who have left this world, hence the play on Lost Soles. I really liked the idea of dedicating shoes to people as a way to commemorate their passing in an artistic way. Latley though it seems many of the shoes I have been finding coincide with a death too often for my liking.

Just the other day when Jason was in town he and I found a shoe, #272 just shortly after coming across a tragic car accident in which a woman lost her life. So I dedicated Shoe #272 to her. That got me thinking about other times when I have crossed paths with the death of someone. Take for instance Shoe #198, I found that shoe in Denver, where two days later while driving down through Loveland, CO along the Big Thompson River there were search teams trying to locate a kayaker that crashed into the rocks and disappeared in the rapids. We do not know if they recovered the body, but we are almost certain he died that day.

One of the early experiences I had with discovering a lost sole connecting with a death was one morning driving home from South Florida. It was a very stormy morning and just outside Ocala on I-75 we hit a wall of rain, hail and violent wind gusts. I remembering thinking Wow, that could have been part of a tornado”. Sure enough, shortly after passing over us, that cell developed into a deadly tornado killing 19 people in Lady Lake. We had no idea that had happened until a few hours later when Sharon’s parents called to make sure we were alright after seeing on CNN the news of the deadly tornado. Before that call, just after the storm passed us we had found a lost sole sitting at the exit ramp to the very town which was devastated by the tornado. It was a very eerie to look back at the image due to the fact it was still wet and dirt was blasted on one side from the winds of the very that storm that killed that devastated that community.

So it seems the Lost Soles theme is taking on a commemorative role, which is cool, but then again I do not like being associated with so much tragedy. Seems the deaths are always something unexpected, or tragic. And I do not like that. It hits home so hard. But I am going to keep photographing the lost soles and commemorating lost souls wit them as long as it happens, just seems like something I should be doing as an artist and a person who wants people to live on through stories because sometimes a person is still alive to friends and family as long as he or she’s memory lives on if only in a small obscure art project.