I worked at Disneyland as a sweeper for the seven years I attended Cal State Fullerton. During my entrance review to be admitted in the graduate design program in 1974, a highly competitive process, I showed the faculty committee seven pieces of trash that I had swept from the ground of Disneyland and was admitted into the program.

Later in 1977 I had a one-person exhibition in the Art Department's gallery, where I displayed hundreds of pieces of trash swept from the streets of the Magic Kingdom.

The aforementioned "trash" were all cast-away Polaroids, byproducts of a popular picture-making method of those days and what I refer to as Polaroid peeloffs, the "negative portion of the Polaroid process.

Today I am a professor of art at Florida State University and have exhibited work all over the country in more than 300 exhibitions.

View Blakely's Polaroid Collection »