“Bella’s Pockets” is an archaeological dig of a second graders secret world
A toy horse with a broken leg.
A vial of glimmering fairy dust.
A dream catcher.
A lost tooth.
A tiny surfboard.
Flouride pills stashed instead of swallowed.
Cafeteria lunch bills that never made it to Mama in time.
What these random objects all have in common is that they lived for a short time in the pockets of a second grader named Bella.
What I have done is collect these objects and photograph them as they appeared in the pockets. Then I quizzed Bella about her stash.
Enjoy the blog posts and my book of Bella’s Pockets
으앙 느므 재밌어 멋져!
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She was a kid that always had something in hand. She was ever alert, scanning her surroundings for valuable stuff. By age 2, she fell asleep most nights with a clenched fist that held some secret surprise. There was a thrill for me every time I unfurled her little fingers, like the petals of a flower opening, to reveal the mystery of her day, in that tiny fist.
Then she moved on. Her pockets became the vault and while doing the laundry, Joe noticed the interesting, sometimes absurd, often humorous treasure in her clothing. He suggested I photograph it so I devised a project: systematically collecting and storing in Ziplock bags the items recovered from her pockets. She was 7 and we did it for a year, never exactly telling Bella but never hiding it from her either. If she happened to ask if I saw her mini pencil, toy horse, or shiny glass, I’d say yes, it’s on the shelf on top of the dryer, I’ll get it for you. She had so much stuff and not really all the things were meant in her mind to stay with her. After all, she was just saving them without much thought for future use. So what was in the hamper, in her pockets on wash day may have been forgotten, abandoned to remain in the pocket of a pair of jeans or jacket.
I chose to shoot them in the batches they were recovered. With minimal placement, many times just choosing a background color and dropping the stuff on the canvass. I wanted the focus to be on the menagerie of the objects, as uncurated as they were when collected. The results for me are pictures that look as fresh and surprising as the day they were plucked from her clothes. And the thoughts of how they made their way into her world are as fun to ponder now as they were the day we discovered them in Bella’s pockets.
I would love to see what you find in your kids pockets! Please send me a picture so I can post it in the archive.
"I whittled that with a pocket knife. And the tiniest little toothpaste -- it was really cute."
Pencil stumps
"I'd use pencils until they got to this size. These I thought were the cutest things ever. The only downside was there'd be no eraser, so I'd try to conserve my erasing."
Accordion folded paper note reading "I Love Fairies," Yarn, Marble, Copper piece
Teacher's note, Playing card, Note from Mama, Safety pin
"Somebody told me to look up Joseph Cornell because he made art out of found objects. I liked to do that too."
Vitamin C tablets, Crumpled up receipt, Watch battery, White bead, Flouride tablet
"Sierra, my friend, had Vitamin C in her house. They tasted so good we'd sneak five or six a day."
It's part art project, part anthropological experiment -- and it has all the random, unedited charm of a second grader's colorful imagination.
More than a decade ago, Lisa Bauso and her husband, Joe, spent a year saving the items their daughter brought home in her pockets -- carefully preserving each day's haul in a dated Ziploc bag in the laundry room -- before Bauso ultimately photographed it all, batch by batch.
The resulting book, "Bella's Pockets," is a whimsical catalogue of "found" items curated by a 7-year-old for whom everything, even a lunch money reminder, was a souvenir. Many of the photos are accompanied by explanatory captions provided by Bella herself when she was 12 (she is now 18).
"As a toddler [Bella] always had something clenched in her fist," Bauso told HuffPost over email. "Later, her pockets were her mini museums. She was always crouching down to pick something up on the street, bringing it to her eyes to examine it, like a diamond broker searching for flaws and color, then shoving it in a pocket."
Naturally, along with the regular detritus of a second grader's daily life -- pennies, erasers, candy wrappers, a fortune teller -- there are treasures of a less predictable sort: a cocktail sword, figures from a nativity set, and a quarter pound of roofing nails (Bauso says that particular batch surprised her the most).
The book has 76 images of the items found in Bella's pockets -- and only two photos of Bella herself -- but somehow comes across like nothing more than a high-resolution portrait.
LOOK: What Lisa Bauso found in her daughter's pockets (with captions courtesy of Bella)
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