The Kiddie Car Wash

Presented outside the Arts Factory, the 1998 Gateway Festival was conceived as an annual event. It served as a dry run for the future First Friday. The Gateway Festival was the first time I saw children playing in the tactile corridor. I was alerted to the possibilities of tactile immersion spaces as a children’s toy.

As a student in an art department steeped in Conceptualism, I learned respect for the theory but it did not lead me to produce work. . Twenty years later I was developing an art object that defied a summary with the familiar language used to describe art. Its appearance had nothing to do with the experience of it. An description of the dramatic arc of the tactile corridor required identifying a succession of contrasting tactile sensations.

It was an odd virtue that it defied efforts to use language to describe it. The virtue reached its apogee in the Kiddee Carwash when it was adopted by pre-verbal children.

I applied for and received a patent on the concept. The application was another hat tip to principles of Conceptualism. If the originality of art is attested to by the US Patent Office, does that add intrinsic value to it? Set aside such conversations, the patent led to licensing the idea.

In 2018 I presented the Kiddee Car Wash and the Iron Curtain at a downtown Las Vegas event by F.E.A.T., (Families for Effective Autism Treatment.) Lots of kids had fun with them. Perhaps someday the pieces will find a home in a playground oriented toward children on the Autism spectrum. It is perplexing that I have had no success with suggestions that these devices might also be appealing to blind children.