Project

EMERGENCY BLANKET WEAVINGS

I have been experimenting with weavings made of mylar foil emergency thermal blankets. This lightweight material is used for first aid body warmth maintenance, emergency shelter, protection from weather, or reflective distress signals. Using both floor looms and table top looms, I weave a weft of strips cut from the mylar blankets and a warp of mason twine (used for marking invisible spaces in construction and to draw straight lines for landscaping and masonry) as well as local wool, linen, cotton and felt.  

I’m intrigued by these two different senses of time: moments of crisis versus hours of craft/labor. Weaving and craft-time suggests a kind of optimism and belief in the future: the idea that someone will be here 100 years from now using a blanket someone wove in a future that becomes increasingly hard to imagine.

Project

EMERGENCE/EMERGENCY

This installation was part of Intersections, a public art project on the Berkeley Paths on the eve of the Pandemic in 2020, organized and curated by Hadley Dynak @peak_86. 

In this temporary site-specific installation called “Emergence/Emergency,” I am thinking of the ways lines of public/private shift in times of crisis.  These gold/silver emergency blankets remind me of Japanese screens but in this installation, they blow in the breeze they lift and reveal private spaces.

The Berkeley paths were largely created as emergency egress, paths between the houses to allow people to escape their homes on foot. The paths are easements through private property.  I thought of the word “easement” too and the dual meanings of ease/comfort and the right to cross or otherwise use someone else’s land for a specified purpose.  The emergency blankets provide ease, comfort and warmth in times of crisis while in this installation also creating a screen between the public path and a private home.

Though it's tricky to talk about the upsides of emergencies and crisis, there is beauty is shedding the illusion of self-sufficiency and realizing the ways in which we are connected to each other.