Sarah Madeleine T. Guerin, also known as Saboteuse, is an artist who builds Western boots by hand from leather and other raw materials using traditional tools. Her contemporary art practice centers around the architecture of 19th-century Massachusetts “ten footer” shoe shops like Lye-Tapley, which were once a common sight on the North Shore. These ground-level, neighborhood workshops previously connected everyday people with the process of shoemaking and shoe repair. Inside, shoemakers — almost always men — collaborated with women upper-makers, or "binders," who worked from their homes.

A sophisticated handcraft, shoemaking, and Western bootmaking in particular, nearly died out when shoes began to be produced by machine in factories on an industrial scale. While 19th-century people could watch shoes being made in their communities, the average person living today is disconnected from the global footwear industry. Those processes and materials significantly contribute to climate change, and too many of the 65 million shoes produced every day end up in landfills. The fashion industry as a whole is also vulnerable to labor inequity, particularly for women.

Guerin's focus on ten footers as workshop models led her to research on gender roles in shoemaking and gaps in women’s history as craftspeople. When she’s not in residence at PEM, she works out of her own replica ten footer in Wakefield. 

Artist demonstrations are free to visit. Listen to PEM Walks to learn more about the history of the Lye-Tapley Shoe Shop.