HOMESPUN: The Lives We Stitch Together
2020 - 2022
My Homespun portfolio began during the unprecedented months of quarantine in 2020, when my college-aged children all came back home. After dinner, I would often find them sitting together knitting and crocheting. Seemingly woven into their DNA, when feeling anxious and lost, they reached for the comfort of yarn in order to create something that felt safe and warm.
During my childhood, my mother was a dedicated knitter. The soothing, repetitive motion of wrapping yarn around needles gave her a sense of control. Shortly after we immigrated to the US, she knit woolen ponchos for her three children, even though we lived in Miami. My mother used any opportunity to teach me to knit. Though I never took to the craft, it re-surfaced in the next generation.
For this series, I collaborate with my three children and use their stitching as a metaphor to construct a visual story of our lives. Just as tension determines the body of a fabric, I use yarn, string, and rope to interlace a narrative. A textile carries its own qualities: tenacity, strength, and resistance. My images portray our fears, hopes, and comforts – the lives we stitch together.
