Repurposing A Relic from the Past
I remember how excited I was years ago when I finally found a slide cabinet that fit perfectly into this space on my bookshelf. And there it sat for over 15 years. Until today.
Since the house painters are coming next week and I need to empty the shelves anyway, I am taking this opportunity to say good bye to a system that helped organize my life when art galleries were still asking to see slides of your artwork.
I would walk into a gallery with 20 slides in a sleeve (typically gallery computers couldn’t even open CDs!). That’s how I got my first show at OK Harris in Soho.
I used to make at least 10 slides made for each painting, and had hundreds of slides lying around in slide boxes. When the slide cabinet arrived, everything easily fit in, my slides took up less space, and I threw out a stack of slide boxes with tops that never stayed closed… For the first time, I could quickly find what I needed. Marie Kondo would have approved.
Each drawer was configured to hold 5 rows of slides, with movable custom tabs separating each section of identical slides.
In a labor of love, I bought mini labels (1/4″) for each slide so my presentation looked professional. It took me days to figure out how to squeeze the information on this little labels, print and adhere them to each slide.
With so much of myself invested in this slide cabinet, perhaps you can understand why I’m finding it hard to let it go – even though we live in a world where slides are obsolete and slide cabinets are a relic from the past.
Then I thought about repurposing the cabinet (15’W, 12 3/4″ H, 11 3/4 D). I’m hoping maybe someone can find an alternative use for it. I have been thinking that maybe another artist or craftsperson who does mosaics, beadwork, metalwork, or collage using little stones or charms, can use this as a storage cabinet for raw materials. The flexible divider system is a definite plus.
I would love to pass this on to you. If you would like to have this cabinet as a gift, please contact me and it’s yours.
P.S. I’ll be hanging on to several slide sheets. When I lecture, I discovered that showing slides gets a good laugh when my audience is young. They know about downloads and clouds, but never slides! Ah, technology marches on.
