Harrison Grey Otis Saturday Night Specials

Two-sentence summary:

I formed a gang. Based on our experiences at school, each member received a personalized jacket.

One of twenty-four jackets, each has a unique set of symbols:

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The Story:

I want to belong, and I think others do too. That was the germ that began this project.

I was in school, and I wanted to make something that reminded me and my friends that we were all connected, united by our experience.

So— I formed a gang and designed 25 symbols, with each symbol related to specific experience that were common in our lives as art school students. This birthed the Harrison Gray Otis Saturday Night Specials or the H.G.O. S.N.S.. Harrison Gray Otis was our school’s founder, and Saturday Night Specials was a nod to the common experience of working at school on Saturday nights.

After filling out an ‘Either/Or’ questionnaire about their experience at school, each person’s jacket was screen-printed with corresponding symbols to match their answers. After printing every jacket, no two jackets were alike. It revealed there was no completely universal experience, but that many of us were related in more ways than we had previously known.

The questionnaire that each member filled out:

HGO SNS Form Moss

One of twenty-five symbols. This one designates people who started smoking at school:

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Here are about 2/3 of our registered members of the H.G.O.-S.N.S.:

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Here are photos of the members in their jackets with identities hidden.

Here is a blog I wrote to document the process of making this project.

Here are all of the symbols used on the jackets.