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Frozen Pants: The Ultimate in Voluntary Public Art

Ruth McCambridge
January 25, 2016
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Standing-pants

January 23, 2016; The Atlantic, “CityLab”

So, one function of public art is that it stops you and makes you think differently about your life, your day, your surroundings. We would submit that Tom Grotting’s little unfunded local public art project does just that.

It’s evidently Grotting’s frozen pants period. The materials are reclaimed, so the project is very environmentally friendly. Plus, the work is locally emotionally resonant, as anyone who has ever lived in a frigid place like Minneapolis can attest. (There is nothing more unattractive than a pair of frozen long underwear.)

Waiting for the city to warm up

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A photo posted by Tom Grotting (@tomgrotting) on Jan 16, 2016 at 6:37am PST

Grotting says he simply soaks a few pairs of jeans and hangs them for a bit. This makes them both malleable and able to take a stand independently. Sometimes, they peruse the horizon from roadside or lounge outside a neighborhood coffee shop, and sometimes he puts them in front of parking meters, where he can see people “awkwardly squeezing in between the frozen pants as they tried to fill the meter” near his work.

Is it an expression of the misery or the joy of winter? Who knows? But we all need a little relief in weather that will actually keep the pants where they are placed by the artist.—Ruth McCambridge

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About the author
Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

More about: public artsArts and CultureNonprofit News

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