Paper Bag Weavings

2017 - 2018
These weavings use modest, direct means to pursue ideas about regional identity and local character. As a politically engaged person, I look for the qualities of the ‘local’, as a way to reflect on the political implications of the ‘national’. My materials are in the local groceries stores of Kansas City; Ames, Iowa; Fenton, Michigan. My inspirations for pattern and composition are the views from the highways: the modernist designs of Nebraska’s I80 rest areas, the patterns of Iowa’s new windmills against its long-planted fields. 

This work takes my research into the terrain of American households, local communities and regional identity through the franchise, the small business narrative, success and failure. This could be seen as a grand narrative, but rather than grand, I am interested in the modest, the small-potatoes, the low stakes. The Midwest has captured me as a vehicle for this set of interests.