MTSU art student, Brian Hutsebout, filled the exhibit space of Moxie Art Supply & Studio School with a “site specific installation piece” of an unusual medium for a one-evening event.

The artist collected hundreds of pairs of pants, all of a dark-brownish hue, neatly rolled each one and orderly lined the entire floorspace with the pants. Additionally, visitors were asked upon entering the room to remove their shoes.

Many of the clothing items were acquired from Goodwill, where on some occasions the shopper may actually purchase large amounts of clothing by the pound.

“My goal is to contrast nature’s slow advances with the synthetic rapidity of contemporary human mass production,” Hutsebout said in a statement about the exhibit.

While the installation was untraditional, it did elicit a wide variety of responses from the observers.

Brian Hutsebout

“This looks like my room when I was a teenager,” one lady said.

Another exhibit viewer/toucher commented that walking barefoot atop the rolled up pants actually felt quite good to the feet and served as a nice foot massage experience in the dim, quiet room.

Another, whose German heritage greatly affected her reaction to the event, said the great amount of dark clothing reminder her of visiting a museum in Germany that showed a display of clothing from individuals killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Whether or not each visitor realized the artist’s intention to “illuminate temporal processes that are easily forgotten, acknowledging the power inherent in nature,” a roomful of rolled-up pants did ignite some interesting conversations and emotions, and the experience of having physical interaction and contact with an art display is appreciated.