WEAVING NEW STORIES

 

My work has long been about telling stories, upcycling and recycling, reimagining garments and other objects. Weaving new stories and reweaving old ones is something I believe to be important in the times we are living, whether artists, writers, or creative visionaries. 

When photographer Jennifer Moran invited me to participate in a benefit exhibition about migration, I jumped at the chance. Living south of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, I see and feel the imbalance of this societal crisis every day. This exhibition will benefit a new longterm facility for those coming to Mexico from places farther south, and my first thought was to create textile art works from garments worn upon arriving here. So I checked with Stan Allen at Casa ABBA to ask "what happens to the old clothes and shoes they're wearing upon arrival?" 

When they arrive, all migrants are given a shower, new clothes and shoes, food, medical check up, a mat on the floor, and safe haven for a maximum of 3 days. Usually, the clothes and shoes are so trashed they end up exactly there, in the trash. So I asked if I could have some of them to build a body of work with, and after sending them to the laundry, began to build my first piece. As a base, I used an old steel grid that is sometimes used as fencing to keep out unwanted visitors, whether coyote, dog, or human. 

N.S. de Guadalupe, 45x55", migrant shoes and clothing, 2003   

Cutting the tops of the shoes off, I decided to paint each one in Mexico's favorite color, Rosa Mexicano, and I knew that's where I wanted to begin to reweave the story. I stripped and ripped some of the clothes, added some old textiles of my own, and began to add them, along with shoe tops tied to the grid with their own shoelaces. One shoe in the middle kept standing out, looking at me, until I saw that it was in the shape of La Virgen, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. "Make roses" it said, so I learned to make roses from the textiles. The new story, rewoven, is "Welcome to all the children of the Goddess of the Americas."