Have you seen this person?

A Seven Days reader nearly drove off the road the first time she did. The white-clad figure was walking down the sidewalk on Shelburne Road near Liberty Inn & Suites around 7:45 a.m. Wednesday morning.

“It’s the strangest thing, they wear this ankle length white puffy coat with large red balls hanging off of it,” writes the reader. “The coat is a little odd, but typically, I wouldn’t take much notice. It’s the fact that they are also wearing a very bizarre white plastic mask (kind of like Phantom of the Opera, but covering their entire face).”

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you feel about creepy-looking characters wandering the streets — this is not an “abominable snowperson,” as our reader suggested. It’s artist Kate Donnelly, in the midst of “Also There: A Performance for the Commuter.” From 7:45 to 8:15 each weekday for the next few weeks, Donnelly will don her white-and-red suit and mask, and walk the sidewalks south along Shelburne Road, west along Home Avenue, north along Pine Street and, finally, east along Birchcliff Parkway.

Why?

Donnelly says she’s interested in transition. Her white figure, “momentarily interrupts the attention of an audience who are engaged in a daily transition — that is, their commute from home to work, from one self to another,” she writes on her blog. “The diversion is fleeting, the sight familiar (human) but not identifiable. With the daily reappearance of the figure, the audience may witness the sight again and again, begin to notice it changing, perhaps even look for it. It may become part of their routine.”

She adds, “We take comfort in titles, certainties, tangible outcomes … I wish to remind the audience of the absurd and unpredictable, to remind them to notice the anomalies and embrace adventure.”

Word.

I wonder what she’ll do if someone tries to talk to her on the sidewalk. I’d try it myself, but for some reason, that suit really freaks me out.

For more (slightly nightmare-inducing) photos of Donnelly in action, check out her blog: alsothere.blogspot.com. Learn more about her other projects at katedonnelly.net.

 

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This article appears in The Love & Marriage Issue 2012.

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Megan James began writing for Seven Days in 2010, first as Associate Arts Editor. She later became an editor for Seven Days' monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT, and is currently a freelance contributor.

4 replies on “Performance Artist Unsettles Burlington Commuters”

  2. She’s kind of like the padded albino version of Rubber Man in American Horror Story.

    Though not as disturbing.

  3. I think this is cool, but I grew up in the neighborhood around Birchcliff Parkway, and if I saw that thing when I was a kid, it would have scared the bejesus out of me. I probably would have been traumatized. I wonder if there are any parents flipping out about it.

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