Collection: Elaine Bradford
This work is about distance and connection. I had been working for a while with ideas of connecting people physically together through crochet, then the pandemic hit. The isolation of quarantine made these ideas of attachment more significant in my mind. As I sat alone in my house day after day, with little to no human interaction, I began to tether inanimate objects together as representations of these relationships I was missing in my life.
In work created before the lockdown, there were individuals connected to each other through crocheted masks, forcing physical relationships. When I became unable to physically use people because of the coronavirus, the work mined my collection of thrift and antique store finds which surrounded me as I was socially distanced inside my house. I connected found paintings to vintage figurines with crochet appendages. I took apart antique cloth children’s books and embroidered the characters together. I transformed these discarded pieces of people's lives by linking them with crochet, embroidery and collage.
I am interested in the nostalgia created through processes and objects. The connections made with yarn and thread become representations of relationships, both real and imagined. By using these extensions to connect bodies and objects, I am illustrating hopes, thoughts and fears that can bind people together, or tear them apart. These fibers are literal portrayals of being wrapped up in another person, and the distance or closeness that can be created between one another.
Sorry, there are no products in this collection