Infintile Home, recycled fabrics, wool yarn, hand embroidery, ivy leaf, 2022.

This was a highly playful quilting experiment using some scrap fabric and an ivy leaf. To collect the leaf I gently broke in to the back yard of the first house I ever lived in. I was a baby when I lived there and have no memories of the house, with the exception of a perhaps reconstructed memory of the young girl who lived next door. Today this little experiment hangs from my bedroom altar place. I call it infintile home because of it's backstory, but also because of the childish, explorative process of making this piece. For me, this is a creative reminder to reinterpret what home means throughout my life, and to not take my past so seriously that it entirely defines my present. Below is an exerpt from a paper I wrote that references this house and the day I grabbed this leaf.

" The Atlanta house—the home I first lived in, have no memories of, and for quite some time desperately wanted to feel some connection to, but as it’s generalized name might suggest, had no specific memories of. I know it is where I first started to see the world, to see my family. I know this from memories told to me, memories I accept are stored within my body. Growing up in Alabama I found it very cool to think I had been born somewhere else, a traveler from distant lands. Atlanta really did feel so distant, such a journey away. We didn’t live there long, and I’ve only been back to the city a handful of times. The most recent time I tried to find the fabled Atlanta house. I was certain I had found it, thought I could feel it, something about the way the windows fit in the walls, something in the yard. I even trespassed into the backyard, stealing an ivy leaf from the overgrown vines I thought I recognized. I had my sentimental moment there, hugged a tree, and then walked back to my friends (Aidan and Nathaniel) who were waiting in the car parked on the street. My mom called—she had missed my earlier call—and told me that I had been to the wrong house. The right one was a few houses away. I forced my friends to drive a bit further down the street, and repeated my process of trespassing, leaf stealing, and sentiment having, though the sincerity of it as well as my claim over any supposed umbilical tie to the building felt seriously undermined. My friends where gracious enough not to comment on my nostalgic charade. I stitched the leaf I stole into sloppy quilt patch, though I’ll admit quilt patch is a seriously generous label to use. It currently hangs from a shelf, loose edges curling, waiting to be stitched into some largely project. One day. "