ANTWERP – Life can feel smaller, even tiny during the coronavirus pandemic as public health restrictions limit social contacts to a bare minimum.
But Belgian artist Elke Lemmens has found a way to build connections during the ongoing crisis.She is using her artistic skills and a community-building grant from the city of Antwerp to bring ordinary lives — and extraordinary stories — out into the open by giving disused boot-scrapers a second act.
Lemmens will use the grant to install at least 50 miniature scenes in the old niches outside homes that families once used to clean off their shoes.
These dusty architectural remnants of an age when muddy roads and the absence of sidewalks made rubbing one's footwear over metal a prerequisite for.