Mothers of Thread is an homage to my mother and to every woman grappling with growing old. It’s an apology. It is me coming to terms with my own fear of this invisible problem that eventually exiles women and their work to the edges of society. We look right through the faces we no longer see value in. A woman who is no longer embedded in the cult of youth, who can no longer work, produce, is a threat. As they cease being valuable as beautiful ornaments or thankless workers our elders are ostracized and ignored, being reduced to the quiet little old lady or the wicked crone.
Women are the weavers of networks, sitting within a web of interconnecting, layered realities and roles. They are measured through the success of those they are tied to, rather than be regarded as individuals. What is your worth when you can no longer service others?
When a person enters our family my grandmother knits them a stocking embellished with their name. Every holiday they get hung as beautiful totems of her love. I have seen how the arts of older women have been shunned. Folk art has long been deemed a lesser form of creative expression. Perhaps this is because textiles are seen as women's work or because they are passed down through generations. My work taps into the history of craft as an art of rebellion, maximalism, and femininity, analyzing how folk arts and the women who perfect them are exiled.
