Covid Purses

Purse/handbag/pocketbook/clutch-bag

When I was a young tom-girl, mom always insisted I would have to grow up some day and carry a purse. The idea of lugging around an appointment book, lipstick, and a checkbook sounded like a real drag for kid who rather just keep a few quarters to buy a pop after climbing trees all afternoon. However, once I got my driver’s license, lip-gloss, and had 6 classes with homework every day, I realized I needed something to manage my life. As I got older, I never got into luxury handbags, but liked celebrating each season with a different style purse: picnic basket for summer, my jewel-covered vintage for fall, black Chinese silky tote for winter.

When Covid-19 hit this spring, my canary yellow purse pretty much camped out on the counter as my calendar became a series of cancelled boxes and masks made lipstick pointless. I began taking walks and bike rides on nature trails and carrying home moss and unusual discarded items that caught my fancy. Rather than spending money on more and more purses, what would happen if I made my own as artwork? I wondered. As I put them together, I wondered about the beautiful ruffles of the mushroom and the national obsession with toilet paper and all the products that pile up in our landfills. I wondered about how our values were shifting as a country.

Many of my Covid purses are about spending trends in our country, how we spend our time and money, but many are about the simply finding value and beauty in nature. Nature is a great metaphor, and Covid-19 is an act of nature. It is hard to believe something so small in nature could shut down worldwide economies. I have begun writing poems interpreting the purses and giving them a voice. My catalpa pod purse spoke to me: ”I’m curved like a parenthesis or an off-ramp, but shake me like a piggy bank after this quarantine and I will grow into your victory garden.”

Some of my friends in a poetry class at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art wrote some provocative poems about them as well.

Answers to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Purses

Judas Iscariot, the first person written to have carried a bag. Not a good vibe, friends!
6-11, the number of handbags the average woman has. How many do you have?
$160, what the average woman is willing to spend on a purse!
$1,500, how much the Daily Mail estimates the average worth of items in a woman’s purse
cell phone, credit cards, lip stick are just some of the items women carry for all who wondered. Compare this to Grandma who used to carry face powder,a rain bonnet, and handkerchief.
35-39% less spending on purses during Covid according to a McKinsey report.
11,000 BC, the oldest art of a purse is in Göbekli Tepe is the earliest depiction of an ancient purse in a Turkish temple.
The cosmos, what many believe the Turkish mythical creature is carrying in his purse.( And you thought you carried a lot in your purse!

I now own more purses than the average woman, and I plan to keep developing my line. They carry everything from breadcrumbs to Jesus.

Answers to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Purses

Judas Iscariot, the first person written to have carried a bag. Not a good vibe, friends!
6-11, the number of handbags the average woman has. How many do you have?
$160, what the average woman is willing to spend on a purse!
$1,500, how much the Daily Mail estimates the average worth of items in a woman’s purse
cell phone, credit cards, lip stick are just some of the items women carry for all who wondered. Compare this to Grandma who used to carry face powder,a rain bonnet, and handkerchief.
35-39% less spending on purses during Covid according to a McKinsey report.
11,000 BC, the oldest art of a purse is in Göbekli Tepe is the earliest depiction of an ancient purse in a Turkish temple.
The cosmos, what many believe the Turkish mythical creature is carrying in his purse.( And you thought you carried a lot in your purse!