A Spiffy Biffy portable toilet is cheerfully decorated on the corner of Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue northwest in Valley City on April 24. A Valley City native is putting together a collaborative exhibit on the city’s porta-potty experience (Dennis Stillings / Times-Record).

Portable toilets become source of collaborative Barnes museum exhibit

By Steve Browne
Staff writer

When Valley City’s sewer system went out of commission in spring 2009, Barnes County Historical Society Museum Curator Wes Anderson penned a poem and sent it to a few friends.
Those friends forwarded it to more friends. It eventually arrived in the e-mail inbox of Valley City native Molly McLain, a 2005 Valley City State University graduate who now lives in Fargo.
McLain is a self-described struggling artist who specializes in found-object art, using odds and ends she finds and her own ingenuity to make mobiles and jewelry.
“I was here through the flood, and I was unemployed at the time,” McLain said. “So to pass the time, I’d drive out into the country on dirt roads and take pictures.”
McLain also took pictures in Valley City, particularly of the Spiffy Biffy portable toilets set up after the April 17 sewer system failure.
Now McLain has blown up and framed 14 black-and-white photos for a museum exhibit that will show in April. She hopes the exhibit is collaborative, and Anderson’s poem – which references Valley City Mayor Mary Lee Nielson – will be included.