Victorian

This is one of a series inspired by my neighborhood walks. Many of the small older houses in my neighborhood of The Heights and in the city of Little Rock in general are being torn down. A large claw machine comes and load the debris into trucks and often within a day the house is gone. Sometimes bits of debris remain, the cement from an old walkway or a slab of concrete from a patio. Sometimes nothing is left. These empty lots await a new bigger house to be built. Sometimes in spring daffodils will bloom or an ancient rose bush still stands guard. This body of work is an imagining of the layers of who lived there, how many lives came and went?  The layers of photos, letters, bills, and cards all stirred in with the layer of leaf litter. The house is drawn with stitched thread over the layers to give an impression of what was and what no longer is.

Each piece is a layering of eco dyed, rust dyes, and hand stamped fabrics. Found and foraged photos, letters, pattern paper and other ephemera of a lived life layers next. All the elements are fused and stitch by hand and machine to a canvas that is backed with a heavy-duty stabilizer. 12×25″ created in Winter 2024