The idea for this piece came out of a talk I had with my NRSI Margo. I've been doing some genealogical research , I'm not sure where it's going quite yet, but Margo was asking me what I've learned from it. It's difficult to articulate. I see a lot of patterns, movements of great groups of people rather than each person individually. It seems arbitrary to me who gets written down and remembered and who is lost in time. Sometimes it's easy to find the information I'm looking for and other times I feel like I'm trying to cobble a past out of scraps. So, I've taken some recipie cards written by my great-grandmother and made digital prints. Then, I cut the prints into strips and wove them into a small square, using thread from the shoe mill where she used to work as a warp. Then, I sowed the fabric together carefully with my own, white cotton thread. This reinforced the small square, but also poked holes in the writing and made it even harder to read. I then sewed this patch on a blanket I own in an attempt to make the past relevant to my life. (I took pictures that show the blanket more clearly but I don't think they came out as well.)
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