ink on found fabrics, natural dyes
This work—part photograph, part quilt, part print—explores the boundaries between craft and art. The act of creation is part of this piece’s soul and purpose; hand-dying, cutting and sewing each tile became a meditative practice of creation, division, and re-combination. Sewing mimicked the iterative and mindless aspects of printmaking (inking, stamping, inking, stamping). I was inspired by nighttime neighborhood walks and dark residential streets that become dark patterns of lighted windows after sundown. Their light both beckons and forebodes, reminding us both that there are others within and that we are necessarily without. The quilt became a symbol for a kind of mythic New England domesticity that is exotic to me and feels very much like a kind of costume to try on, character to playact.