Show and tell as art

A city-wide show and tell is being planned for Philadelphia. For ten years, First Person Arts has encouraged people to stand in front of strangers at bars to tell their personal stories – now it is asking them to bring objects that tell their stories.

A city-wide show and tell is being planned for Philadelphia. For ten years, First Person Arts has encouraged people to stand in front of strangers at bars to tell their personal stories – now it is asking them to bring objects that tell their stories.

Behind every object is a story, and often the reverse is also true.

Andrew Price is the son of an Army Colonel who worked intelligence at a World War II prisoner of war camp in Trinidad, Colorado.

When Andrew was a college student studying abroad, he met a man in a German bar who spoke excellent English. Price asked him if he’d ever been to the states, and they man said he had been to Trinidad.

We’re you a prisoner of war? He says, yes, how did you know? I was born in the camp, my father was Colonel Price. He says I know your dad – when you were born we called you Pupshin; because I have blonde hair and blue eyes and I looked like a German kid. He said, I did a plaque for your father when he left!

That plaque – made by a prisoner to honor his captor – is raw material for the upcoming “Memoir Museum.” First Person Arts is now collecting stories and objects for an exhibit during the First Person Festival in November.  I’m