There’s something startling about wandering into a stranger’s bedroom and finding a price tag on slippers in their closet that I may now buy. — Hannah Burr
ESTATE SALE was an intimate, public mash-up of opportunity and loss that took place as a one-time- event at Hannah Burr’s dream studio in Ann Arbor just before she vacated it permanently as part of her divorce. Estate sales occur in spaces of personal upheaval, when private space opens to bargain hunters + sifters.
This event marked the end-times for Hannah in her dream studio. She invited the art and general public to marvel, explore and provide a home for unique, beautiful, and inspiring delights from her long-held stash. She made a Stand In sculpture out of completely broken things, a rack of studio grab bags filled with colorful detritus, and invited visitors to cross one item off her handwritten Letting Go list for each item they purchased: a list of intangible states and attitudes she released through this process.
She also invited visitors to share what their interest or association was with the items they selected and made recordings of their responses.
This project was a fifteen year redux of Yardsale, a similar concept from an earlier time, and a form of creative catharsis for the unprecedented upheaval of the transitional moment in her life.