Devoted to mapping the world around them, in both the physical and conceptual sense, Kansas City Art Institute alums Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler enjoyed working with material culture, from baby-food jars to old pie tins. They collaborated for a short but fruitful time before Ericson died of cancer in 1995. In this summerlong exhibition at the H&R Block Artspace, curated by MIT's Bill Arning and Skidmore's Ian Berry, memories and histories of use and misuse were contained in simple, everyday objects — such as the 400 pie recipes inscribed on glass jars and tucked in an antique pie cupboard. The jars were filled with specially concocted scents that the artists had commissioned, based on the smells of old books and records from the National Archives. Ericson and Ziegler examined how people and places fit together in ways that were clever, tender and smart.
