Albuquerque Foreclosure Quilt

Each little hole in the fabric, each block of color represents a lost home, and all the grief and hopelessness that comes with it. I feel like I understand the housing crisis much better by looking at one of these quilts than I do by reading endless articles.

Detroit Foreclosure Quilt

You can see many more of her quilts and read an explanation of the project in Kathryn’s own words on her blog.

Last week, I gave myself some time off to refill the creative well. I went to the library and chose randomly inspiring books on Andy Goldsworthy, Shaker furniture, Antique Jewelry and William Morris. I scribbled ideas in my sketchbook. I wandered off and washed a couple of windows. I tidied my desk. Eventually I dug through my drawers of materials… and there were the findings, waiting.

So I made something that isn’t strictly anything, and had a wonderful time doing it.

Now this blanket-curtain-whatever-it-is is hanging on the wall, catching the light in its old metal shimmery way, and delighting me. I want to make a GIANT one if I can hunt down more of these findings. The bagful is all used up.

How could you fail to sleep well?

I also covet her gorgeous trellis.

Of course the whole established perennial garden is part of the dream too. Better find me a plot and get digging.

They’re so playful and practical at the same time. Turns out the piece is called Two Too Large Tables and is by Allan and Ellen Wexler. On their website there are many more inspiring projects.

Photos of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth at the Tate Modern in London. I love the pictures, and after reading a little about the piece I love the sculpture even more.

Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

Living in Crown Heights (a neighborhood synonymous nationwide with race riots) makes me extra hungry for anything that speaks to the presence of racism in our world. Being part of a tiny white minority, feeling the weight of my skin and privilege and education, trying not to impose, trying to connect… feels very much like trying to avoid giant cracks in the sidewalk.

This mask was my first assignment when I took a class with Katharine Cobey.

Many of my guests are freaked out by it. I like it.

Packing requires touching everything, visiting a little.
CON: it slows me down. PRO: it entertains me.

It reminded me of this sculpture called Welcome by Raphael Zollinger, presently on the campus of the Pratt Institute here in Brooklyn.

It really creeps me out that people walk by unconcerned. In the same way that it bothers me to think of a circle of figures waiting forever expectant, unseen on the ocean bed.