Endings

Dawn (the first U.S. sighting of Sputnik, October 6, 1957, Fairbanks, Alaska)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in.
As Sputnik was seen for the first time above the United States by an unknowing individual wondering at the steady moving light overhead, this event marked the dawning of the Space Age. Rumors spread that the beeping satellite was gathering military intelligence, as future satellites would, and for the first time the once innocent heavens became linked with attempted domination and its attendant culture of fear.
Dawn (the first U.S. sighting of Sputnik, October 6, 1957, Fairbanks, Alaska)

detail
Sunrise over Yesterday (looking across the International Date Line, September 11, 2001)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in.
Standing in a place where it is September 11th, 2001 and watching the sun rise across the International Date Line over September 10th, one looks from a place of knowledge towards a time before, towards a different world, however naively perceived or real, before a single event and its rippling effects shifted so much.
Sunrise over Yesterday (looking across the International Date Line, September 11, 2001)

is shown in progress as, once the dyeing process is complete, I map out with chalk the size and trajectory of each star, establishing the pattern for hand stitching.
Sunrise over Yesterday (looking across the International Date Line, September 11, 2001)

stitching detail
Dawn (Left Illinois for California, April 15, 1859)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in.
The title for this work is taken from a nineteenth-century embroidered inscription on a quilt made by the Hezlep and Shuey families as they embarked on their three-month journey to California from Hamilton, Illinois. Showing the stars as they fade on the morning of their departure to symbolize the closing of one chapter, this piece uses the American pioneer movement as an example of how expectation forces a rupture with the past and our decisions pull us into the future.
Dawn (Left Illinois for California, April 15, 1859)

is shown here during the dyeing progress. The fabric is stretched for an even application of dye and the color is added layer by layer with a brush, slowly building to its final value.
Dawn (Left Illinois for California, April 15, 1859)

shown after several additional layers of dye have been added.
Endings, installation view

Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, New York, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 2008
A sunrise you might see, not unlike the one I saw today (September 19, 2007 and September 19, 2082)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in.
With the mathematical predictability of the stars, I use the stars seen on a particular morning almost as a message sent into the future, where those same stars would appear in nearly identical alignment on a future morning.
Dawn (Anna Zerissa Morse Thurston, born February 6, 1841, Surry, Maine)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in. (left half of diptych)
This piece is the first half of a diptych presenting scenes from the morning and evening on the birth and death of pioneer woman Anna Zerissa Morse Thurston, whose life I learned about through the legacy of her quilts. On one level the work acts as a memorial–quilts continuing the memory that her own quilts carried–but as the stars fade out in the sky on the morning of her birth and then return to light on the eve of her death, the diptych also acts as a kind of reverse parenthesis, marking time stretching back and continuing forward around the years of her life.
Dusk (Anna Zerissa Morse Thurston, died April 11, 1886, Oakland, California)

2008, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 54 x 100 in. (right half of diptych)
This piece is the second half of a diptych presenting scenes from the morning and evening on the birth and death of pioneer woman Anna Zerissa Morse Thurston, whose life I learned about through the legacy of her quilts. On one level the work acts as a memorial–quilts continuing the memory that her own quilts carried–but as the stars fade out in the sky on the morning of her birth and then return to light on the eve of her death, the diptych also acts as a kind of reverse parenthesis, marking time stretching back and continuing forward around the years of her life.

Tracking the fading light of the night’s stars against that of the emerging day, for the series Endings I chose historical, individual moments exploring the rift between past and future.

The two juxtaposed elements of light are shown in two layers: scenes at dawn and dusk are painted with dye onto fabric paired against the stitched lines of the stars fading with dawn or emerging with dusk. Here the first light of day—a harbinger of what is to come—is contrasted against the stitching of stars burning out in the sky, a symbol of what is lost.

I use a computer program to calculate the actual stars seen at any chosen historic moment, allowing a kind of time traveling that places the viewer at a specific vantage point.

The works have an aspect ratio of 1.85, the same proportions as classic John Wayne westerns like The Searchers, playing off the cliché of riding into the sunset and questioning the idea of an ending implied in that fading of the day’s light.

Additional Bodies of Work