Memory Walks
hand-dyed cotton yarn on raw canvas
2004
10" x 12"
Each of these small canvases are a stitched memory of different walks on the same route. The walks were a part of my and Frank's (my marriage partner's) nightly routine when we would stroll the same familiar route through the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Xs mark the beginning and ending points of each stroll, which physically began and ended at the same point but, in memory, never quite match up as they are re-walked / re-membered through stitches. Each memory is different in emphasis... what with how, in recollection, I might linger on some stretches of road a bit longer or shorter amount of time or accentuate the twists and turns of the streets at slightly different angles.
Sometimes the actual walks included an extra loop around a connecting street (depending on the evening and my and Franks's energy level or interest). This accounts for some of the stitched memories including an extra little loop in the stitching while others do not.
In doing this mapping project, I was drawing a connection between sequential, time-based activities (walking, stitching, remembering, narrating) and spatial, mapped imagery, which are usually static. I was also marking evidence of how repetition, reimagining or re-telling of a story, even in stitches, ingrains a pattern and molds the map (over time) into a more idealized (or nostalgic) form of the "original" territory while still allowing for idiosyncratic differences between each repetition.
