House/Work
The day after Halloween, I moved into my own apartment. Over a week later I'm still having a hard time believing it. In the 6 years since I graduated college I've moved a grand total of...15 times! As a person who loves to nest, this here-and-there has been challenging, to say the least. I could go on and on about this feeling, but if you know, you know...you know? In the winter of 2018 I envisioned an art project that I hoped would help me less homesick, more settled - a residency I called To Sew a Home.
maya standing inside the fabric house. the walls are made of white fabric that has been pieced together. maya stands with her back to the camera wearing all white. she lifts her hand to pick a loose thread off the fabric wall. photo by Becca Haydu.
In February 2018 I placed my trusty Singer on a pedestal in my alma mater's art gallery and over the course of a week I sewed a fabric house out of antique and vintage textiles. The result: a ghost of the idea of home. The walls didn't even touch the ground, but hovered, the whole thing suspended with fishing line from the ceiling. I made the piece in an effort to construct something of my own during a time when I felt very helpless and lost. I just wanted a home. I wanted to never move again. When the residency was over I took the house down and folded it inside a brocade tablecloth, which is where it has resided ever since.
the white walls of the fabric house float above the light brown wooden floors. photo by Becca Haydu.
A month after To Sew a Home I wrote a reflection piece, a sort of instructional meditation on what the process felt like and I typed it up on my typewriter and pinned it to the wall of my studio. I’ll share that later in a separate post :) I'm writing about this now because the homesickness I've felt for most of my adult life has often threatened to swallow me, and I always felt at the mercy of it's tides. Moving into my own apartment is my resistance to this feeling of helplessness. I'm not sewing or even building a home, I'm working three jobs to rent one and make it my own, and it feels monumental. Last night I confronted a sink full of dishes and no sponge by crocheting my own little wonky, checkered one while listening to music. I washed the dishes an hour later when it was finished, happily noticing that the green checks complimented the pink-handled silverware I found at the thrift store the day before. I'm hoping to write more about these moments and the objects I create for my home here on my blog.
atop a yellow velvet cushion, a white hand rests beside a crocheted, checkered dishcloth. a bit of knitting can be seen on the right hand corner of the image, which is made of variegated green yarn.
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