Swept Away

14th Street, Manhattan NY
Art in Odd Places CARE Festival
October 18-20, 2024

Shot and edited by Henry Truitt Harshaw

Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/the-morning-sun"

Swept Away is a three-day performance piece for the 2024 Art in Odd Places festival. With a simple, repetitive gesture I swept public streets to highlight acts of care that shape our shared environment. Wielding a broom and wearing a necklace of house keys—symbols of Zita, Patron Saint of domestic workers and lost keys— I tended to storefronts and sacred buildings by reverently brushing away the detritus of daily life. Each intentional sweep of the broom transformed routine street cleaning into a meditative ritual, drawing attention to the often-invisible labors that sustain our collective spaces.

Art in Odd Places (AiOP) is an annual public art festival that champions the importance of public space as a venue for the well-being of people to interact, initiate, and exchange ideas. Curators: Patricia Miranda and Christopher Kaczmarek