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Found gloves
Forgotton handwear becomes touching work of art
By Caitlin M. Gallardo
The glove lady stopped to pick up her first glove, a ladies cotton gardening glove, when she was in college. Twenty years and 400 gloves later, she finally had an outlet where the world could see them.
Linda Bills Shirley has 338 of her "Found Gloves" displayed in the T.T. Wentworth, Jr. Florida State Museum in Pensacola. They have been there since November and will be until the end of May.
She received five gloves the opening night and since then has received 20 more.
Gale Messerschmidt, curator of exhibits for the museum, was trying to find an exhibit for their theme "Cabinet of Curiosities, Home to Magnificent Obsessions." She thought Shirley's gloves would be perfect.
Messerschmidt met Shirley and originally saw her collection just as she was beginning to make it.
"I remembered them forever," Messerschmidt said. "Every time I saw a glove, I would think of her."
She said there have been a few funny incidences while the gloves have been on display. Two have gone missing and been mysteriously returned.
She said the most startling was when a glove that was originally hanging very high on the wall was removed. It re-appeared in a different place on the same wall.
The display consists of three wall panels filled with rows upon rows of gloves. Some were too fragile to hang, but Shirley still considered them some of her better specimens.
It took Shirley about five days to complete it. She would step back from her work, rearrange it and hang more gloves. She also did her own lighting.
Messerschmidt isn't the only person who thought of Shirley when a glove was found. Shirley said about half of her collection came from other people.
It all began with the cotton gardening glove. She was on a jog when she found it. She found more and started hanging them in her garage. Friends and family members began giving her gloves that they found as well.
It really started snowballing when co-workers and neighbors started giving her gloves too.
"People just can't stop picking them up for me," Shirley said.
Some of her favorite gloves came from unexpected places. Her niece carried one home in her lunch box. When her mother asked her what it was for, she told her to send it to her aunt.
One of her most prized gloves came from China. Her aunt was on a trip and left the tour group to grab a glove for Shirley.
"This is how far-reaching this phenomenon went," Shirley said.
Shirley, a Gulf Breeze resident, has tagged her gloves with the day, time, place and what she was doing when they were found. She did the same with the contributed gloves.
Aneighbor down the street was having a garage sale and a random person at the sale found a single glove.
"The person picked it up and said to her, 'You can't sell this. You have to give it to the glove lady down the street.'" Shirley said.
The first person to call her the glove lady was one
of her close friends. Shirley said he would yell it to her across the tennis courts while she was playing.
"I do think it's a hoot when people call me that," Shirley said.
She said they even call her that at the museum. Someone will page the curator to tell her the glove lady is here.
Messerschmidt said she has only heard good things about the "Found Gloves" exhibit. A museum designer was walking through one day and loved it. He stopped in his tracks to take a closer look at it.
"Most people are totally mesmerized by it," Messerschmidt said. "It's so different."
She doesn't know if "Found Gloves" has increased visitation to the museum, but on Gallery Night there were over 300 people there. Shirley's display will be a part othe Gallery Night on May 9 as well.
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