With all the balls and bats that fly from the shelves in Cooperstown, Scott Carpenter's work seems like it will catch on.

Carpenter's body of work, American Triptych, had its genesis when he was in the midst of a nine year stint "doing the struggling artist routine" in New York City. He was working on a series of thematically related objects and products that represented American iconography, such as a "Sun, Air and Water," quilt and sneakers with a similar pattern on the soles, when a Brooklyn cobbler told him something that changed his life.

"He said a baseball glove is a complicated object," Carpenter said. "In order to perform right it needs to be properly constructed."

So Carpenter went to Ava, Missouri, then home to the Rawlings factory that has since been moved overseas. The move of this plant speaks to another American aspect of production, Carpenter said. Like the footwear industry that has long since gone abroad to ensure cheap mass production, the baseball glove industry no longer takes place on domestic soil.

"I had the skills to make something that looked like a glove," Carpenter said. "But it was still important to me to learn the trade. I wanted that knowledge because I don't see myself just out to make an art object. Rawlings moving overseas revealed the themes I think about in my work, such as the politics involved with sweatshops and slave wages. Sometimes things cost absurdly too little."

Carpenter said the objects in the triptych have special connotations. Quilts, sneakers and gloves each have a relationship to the body, which makes them functional.

"As an artist, you're making a physical object that is supposed to carry weight," Carpenter said. "A glove shapes and forms to your hand. It's a bit of an extension when you're playing baseball."

Philosophy doesn't appeal to Carpenter until it's combined with action.

"Part of my journey was going to Ava to learn the trade," he said. "A lot of my work is about the experience of making and doing, creating a project, making sales."

The gloves are custom made to order, so no two are alike.

"Special attention is given to measuring out an individual's hand and making the glove according to these measurements. Also, attention is given to the customer's preferences and playing style. Each piece of the glove is first cut out by hand which allows for fine adjustments and means that each glove is different," Carpenter said.

People attach a huge amount of sentiment to their gloves, Carpenter said.

"Because of their place in the national game they are an American icon or emblem. They are symbolic objects in so many ways," Carpenter said.

Almost all of the gloves sold in this country are imported, he said, and many of them have been made in undesirable sweatshop conditions.

"I am trying to make gloves locally that are worthy of the sentiment and symbolism that we project onto these objects," Carpenter said.

After Ava, Carpenter found himself at an artists' residency in Blue Mountain, New York, where he met a woman who set up a meeting between Carpenter and Baseball Hall of Fame curator Ted Spencer. Carpenter said that much like his talk with the cobbler, his conversation with Spencer sparked an idea to create gloves in Cooperstown.

"He was just fascinating," Spencer said. "His gloves are really individual works of art. He does beautiful work."

This phase of the operation marks the middle segment of the American Triptych, and some of the items from Ava, Missouri such as paintings, collages, sneakers and quilts will be on display at an opening in Cooperstown at The Baseball Jalapeno on June 29 from 5-7p.m.

Carpenter's studio will be located at 85 Alden Street in Cherry Valley after July 2.