Anna Kristensen, Slip, 2021, borosilicate glass, 21.50 x 21.50 x 23.50 cm, TCG22422
(photo: Felicity Jenkins)

The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction defines a boot scraper as “a horizontal metal plate set in a small frame, once located near the front steps of most buildings; used to scrape dirt or mud from the bottoms of shoes or boots before entering the building; common before the advent of paved streets.” Reimagined here in transparent chartreuse green glass, this specimen came from outside the Charleston, South Carolina home of John C. Calhoun, a particularly toxic early statesman. The material poetics and properties of the almost wet-looking whorls of glass amplify the traces of the hand-worked forging of the original iron while creating a slippery tension with the futility of its implied use. While the iron object roughly scrapes the adherent landscape from a person’s feet before they track it inside, this glass scale replica memorializes that small ritual-cleansing and calls attention to the transition between spaces, another sort of glass window.

- notes on artwork by Rob Smith in conversation with the artist