I’m totally making art in a bank vault right now

I’m participating in a pop up gallery in the middle of my town. An amazing confluence of events has brought things to this point, and here we are. And here I am, grateful, and making installation art out of an abandoned bank vault.

Complete with bank vault door.

And a ventilator thing for if, you know, you get locked in there forever. Yes, there are instructions there for passing “food or tools” through that cylinder to the hapless victim inside. That handle, you pull down and it turns on a fan so you get air. Because it’s a solid concrete room.

When I first got in there, it looked like this:

Every single dang one of the boxes marked “Certified Empty” with a little yellow sticker. So many stickers.
And so, so many keys. Some with numbers, most without.

Unknown Keys. Which is the title of the piece now, “Unknown Key.”

I’m going to let people go in, open doors and boxes, see what’s inside, and sometimes leave a note or an answer to a question behind for others to read. It’s a transitory space, which has held the valuables of hundreds and hundreds of families. The things people value and lock away can be really mundane, or really strange.

At first, I set about making the thing safe, removing drilled-out hardware with sharp edges.

Next was removing all those dang stickers. So many stickers. So many boxes.
Now it looks beautiful.

In my next note I’ll show you how it’s shaping up, with lighting and toys and odd little objects and shining steel and mysterious doors and cubbies inhabited by tiny scenes.
I’m doing lighting design and populating this weird little steel world with things, and words, and space for everyone who visits to spend a minute or two or ten thinking about how our possessions carry our memories.

Also Superman.

If you’re in the SF East Bay, Unknown Key and its host popup gallery JPG@TheBank opens on Valentine’s Day, February 14th. I’d love to see you there. The gallery is gonna be gorgeous.

OH! And I should mention, this very newsletter is GOING LIVE. As in, BAD ART LIVE. In which I interview artists, and we all have opinions and nothing gets resolved, and we leave with the world maybe a little bit bigger than when we arrived. The first three are scheduled! Be there! Sheesh!

My first guest will be Carl Heyward, artist and founder of the Global Art Project. It’s gonna be so cool. I can’t wait.

But for now, I’ve gotta go mess with keys and wee doors and secret boxes.

May you find something valuable you had forgotten about, may all the keys on your keyring go to something, won’t you be my neighbor?

— Betsy

Betsy Streeter writes about art in the Bad Art newsletter, from which this article is taken. Sign up for it here.