WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — We all hold onto things. Perhaps, it’s a worn-out baseball card, a faded concert tee, or a necklace that rarely leaves your neck.
It’s not about what those items are, but what they mean. An exhibit, at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, “Small Objects Big Stories” in West Valley City is exploring exactly that.
The exhibit, a collaboration between the center and PBS Utah, invited members of the community to bring in their most cherished possessions and share the memories behind them.
“People started thinking about what they might have on their shelves or in their closets at home,” Michael Christensen, a visual and performing arts manager for the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, said. “And they started thinking about them a little differently.”
For community member Rachel White, that object is a set of buffalo nickel button covers. “They mean a lot to me,” she said.
White found the button covers in the spring of 1990 during a trip to Death Valley with her best friend, John. She bought them at a gift shop in Badwater Basin. She says she attached them to her thin denim western shirt, which made her feel authentically western — even though she knew they weren’t the real thing.
“I went with my very best friend who is no longer living, so this really means a lot,” she said. “They’re cheap and they’re cheesy. But I just love them because they remind me of that great trip to Death Valley with my dear friend. I’ll always keep them even if I never wear them.”
Christensen says his own keepsakes are tucked away in a box. “I have these two tiny stones that I pulled out of this canal that runs through a park where I’m from next to my high school girlfriend’s home,” he explained.
For him, those stones remind him of being 16 years old and falling in love for the first time.
“I will always have that memory associated to it, that innocence and that first time feeling in my gut of knowing, ‘I think this is what love feels like,’” Christensen said. “They’re just tiny pieces of the earth, but my God are they important to me. And they always will be.”
The things we hold onto might not mean much to anyone else. “The stories are important for the people who hang onto the objects,” Christensen said.
But for people like White, they mean the world. “I’m sure he’s looking down at this and saying, ‘Oh yeah, I remember. I remember our trip,’” White said.
