Lewiston-Auburn artists memorialize shooting victims by installing items left behind

Today, on the anniversary of the Lewiston mass shooting, the city and state as a whole still bears the burden of loss and trauma. As the Lewiston community pauses to remember the victims and honor the survivorsTwo local artists are contributing to the public memory of the tragedy: an installation created from objects left at makeshift memorials.

At the Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Work in Lewiston, artist Tanya Hollander walked into a small room filled with 261 empty bouquet envelopes suspended from the ceiling.

“You can untwist them,” she said as the sleeves brushed against each other, puckering softly. “I love the sound they make when they hit each other. He’s very gentle.”

A small fan hidden under the ceiling blew a light breeze around the room, just enough to make the plastic sleeves twist on their thin threads. They caught the light and cast ghostly shadows on the wall.

They hung singly or in bunches, large and small, some with petals squeezed inside. They are all different, Hollander said, but at the same time the same.

“And I think that really represents the community, right?” Hollander said. “We all grieve together, but there are moments of individuality in the way we grieve.”

Bouquet sleeves hang from a fishing line at a mill in Maine on October 18, 2024. The installation consists of more than 200 sleeves. (Ari Snyder/Maine Public)

After the shootings, Hollander, who lives in Auburn, watched as makeshift memorials sprang up outside the building. bowling and a bar.

She said she was particularly drawn to the bouquet sleeves. With the first snowfall of the year and the help of the Lewiston Public Works Department she collected dozens of them.

“They had an emotional value to me that I don’t think I fully understood at the time,” she said. “But I really like the idea of recycling something that should have been trash and making something beautiful out of it.”

Processing the tragedy has become a theme of the museum’s work since the shooting, said director Rachel Ferrante.

The space that was set aside to house artifacts from the area’s former textile, shoe and brick industries is now also home to countless items left in temporary memorials to those killed a year ago.

“We will probably never be able to show everything we have collected. It’s too much,” Ferrante said.

And she said the collection continues to grow as residents leave behind all sorts of items connected in some way to the shooting – a painted banner, a miniature cornhole board, bowling pins with the names of the 18 victims written in black marker.

A collection of items left in makeshift memorials last year is now on display at MAINE MILL in Lewiston, pictured here Oct. 18, 2024. (Ari Snyder/Maine Public)

The museum is also collecting oral interviews from that night, documenting an unwanted but now inevitable chapter in Lewiston’s history.

“We felt that by preserving objects and then collecting the stories behind them, we could give something back to the community,” Ferrante said.

The central element, an installation in the form of a bouquet sleeve, will be on display until September next year. It’s a collaboration between Hollander and Mia Zellner, another local artist and teacher.

Immediately after the shooting, while the shelter-in-place order was still in effect and the search for people continued, Zellner attracted attention by posting more than a hundred cardboard hearts throughout the city.

“I felt like I had to give something back. You know, as an artist, I can’t just sit with my feelings,” Zellner said. “I have to do something.”

According to her, creating an exhibition-sleeve with a bouquet was another step in turning feeling into action, and grief into art.

Lewiston artist and teacher Mia Zellner at a mill in Maine on October 22, 2024. Immediately after the shooting, Zellner made dozens of heart-shaped signs like the one pictured and posted them throughout the city. They collaborated with Hollander to install the bouquet sleeve. (Ari Snyder/Maine Public)

Zellner is hesitant to use the word “healing” when talking about the impact of her work, especially, she says, given the ongoing incidence of gun violence across the country.

But for museum visitors, she wants the quiet room with empty flower sleeves to be an invitation to pause.

“I hope they can somehow process this, grieve or just reflect,” she said.

One of those visitors, Rachel Goulet, who grew up in Lewiston, hesitated in the threshold before entering the room. All these bouquet sleeves, open mouths with nothing in them. It seemed to take her by surprise.

“It feels so empty,” she said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t think I’d feel this way.”

Her cousin Diana Baillargeon stood on her shoulder.

“You feel the emptiness of what’s left,” she said.

According to Baillargeon, eighteen lives were lost and all that was left was air—the last breath.

This story is a product of the New England News Collaborative. It was originally published from Maine Public.