KUSA — An artist knows inspiration ebbs and flows, so when it flows, Tom Blumenthal seizes the opportunity because he knows it might not come again.
“Yeah, this is my first piece and it’s also my last piece,” Blumenthal said, sitting on a rock beside the flowing Boulder Creek. Above his head, 231 flip-flops dangled from a climbing rope tied between trees.
“All of these flip-flops washed up right here on the beach,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal is the savior of the stray sandals. He collected them from the creek over the past 20 years.
“I had boxes and boxes and boxes of them and I decided this would be a good time to display them,” he said.
Blumenthal and his wife, Betsy, strung the flip-flops from the trees to create a unique art installation visible to tubers in the creek.
“We call it the Tibetan Prayer Flip Flops,” Blumenthal said, holding back a smile. “One of the things we wanted to do here was to deal with the tragic loss of flip flops in Boulder Creek.”
If you lost a flip-flop in Boulder Creek over the past twenty years, there’s a good chance Blumenthal has it.
“Some of them have really fallen apart,” he said, looking at a weathered leather sandal. “Here’s a couple of pink ones and this one, look at the shiny stuff on here!” He pointed to the rhinestones on a women’s sandal.
Blumenthal would never wear any of the flip-flops he found.
“I hate having anything between my toes,” he said.
He gets a kick out of displaying the old sandals and playing artist for a day.
“My wife is an accomplished artist and my father was also an accomplished artist and my sister is an accomplished artist, but not me,” Blumenthal said. “I’m a professor at the University of Colorado.” He teaches molecular biology and genetics. Creating art installations is something new.
“It’s kind of funny and people look at it and laugh and that was the intention,” Blumenthal said.
Art is the eye of the beholder, especially in Boulder.
