Grocery Line

Grocery Line

Plastic grocery bags, clothes line, clothes pins

The thought behind this piece came to me in the spring of 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, when tensions were high. It scurried into my brain while I was standing in line for what seemed like an hour trying to buy a single frozen pizza. I had seen signs around the store telling people to wash and disinfect their purchases when they got home. I remember honestly thinking to myself “how do you wash a pizza?” Then I started thinking about everyone in this endless line, going home and washing everything they just bought. There would be tomatoes and bottles of coca cola washed all the same. While watching a doomsday prepper throw a third jar of Jif peanut butter onto his overloaded cart I asked myself, “where are they gonna dry them all?” and immediately my brain came up with the worst possible answer. I pictured a long laundry line, with fruits, vegetables, individual pieces of bread, and bags of chips clipped onto it. So I went home and made it. I quickly discovered most foods aren’t easily pinned, and my mom doesn’t appreciate her groceries being hung out to dry. Days after throwing in the towel I came across these bags, hundreds and hundreds of them, saved up for years; I know that because we hadn’t lived next to a market basket since I was in sixth grade. I found them, and this is the honest truth, stuffed into an old washing machine that never made it to the dump, and just like that I knew what I had to do. In its original installation I made the line go around almost the entirety of the property. I spent about 8 hours hanging these bags, and even more just watching them, listening to them rustle and blow in the breeze, in awe of the way the sun shined through them. I realized that potentially for the first time, I had made something actually kind of beautiful. All because my parents had the forethought to not throw out their plastic bags and a simple stupid little thought. Ironically throughout the whole process I was putting off doing laundry that my mom had been on my case about.