It was challenging and risky and exciting to integrate my research work and my work with zipper sculptures. I am in accordance with Mary Hamilton (2001) who, in her comments about participatory adult literacy research, recommends that in order to represent the experiences of students as they describe it, researchers employ a range of different sources - photos, video, pictures and visualizations. The insights of people writing about art-based inquiry resonated with 21 my own work, where I too was acknowledging that there is much that cannot be put into words. As well, I was using the sculptures to connect with people in ways that moved beyond what can be accomplished through interviews and conversation. I was inspired to hear the struggles and discussions about the politics of art-based inquiry within education (marino 1997; Neilsen, Cole and Gary 2001). In the literature there are many discussion about validation and the lack of acceptance of art-based work within mainstream academic qualitative research and explorations of alternative validity (Barone 1997; Bamford 2000).

Creating zipper sculptures was an ongoing part of my analytic process and a means of maintaining some semblance of balance during my struggles with the thesis writing process, which are discussed in the epilogue to the literature chapter. I also chose to represent the experiences of some students through the zipper sculptures and set up opportunities for participants to create their own sculptures.

Zipper Sculptures at the Centre

I first introduced the artifacts during one of my weekly presentations to the Centre. I showed some sculptures I had created prior to starting my fieldwork, using them to explain my stance and beliefs about power and authority relationship dynamics. As well, I showed two sculptures I had created in response to conversations and interviews with students. One was a head with a large zipper mouth, titled Voices, and the other was a maze being negotiated by a hand-held zipper puppet. These artifacts were used as a way of testing my ongoing interpretations and analysis of my observations and the interviews with the students.

Responses to this first presentation from the twelve people present at the meeting ranged from puzzled faces and indifference to outbursts of laughter. I courted and welcomed the laughter as a sign of engagement. I was aware of the possible mystique and potential distancing surrounding the artifacts and the art process, so it was important to me to keep the presentation light and interactive. A few people had questions about the Voices and Maze sculptures, asking when, how and why they were made. Christina suggested altering the puppet in the Maze so its feet resembled wheels and could turn, "like when you're on a roll!" During a later session when several of us were creating sculptures and I needed a model to copy to make changes to the puppet, I asked Christina to please position her body as if she were "on a roll". Through her posturing we both discovered that we ascribed very different meanings to "being on a roll".