Elisabeth Sandler
From Home
The patchwork pieces in this collection, titled “From Home”, are an exploration of shapes from my memory as I reflected on my personal concept of home. In a time when many are displaced, I considered my own experience of many relocations and my ever-shifting concept of the idea of home. As I pieced together the panels I considered the history of resourceful storytelling in the tradition of quilting. The three panels depict my endeavor throughout my life to build my own story of what home means to me. The woven piece in this collection, titled “Woven Record”, was woven freely as I experienced the tumult of the pandemic. I worked on the piece through my displacement from my home in New York, and maintained the weaving as a diary. Now it serves as a record of my recent emotional experience. This collection represents part of what is so wonderful about textiles, in that they can travel with a person through many phases of their life. My experience has taught me that textiles can be a source of healing. They can serve as records, reminders, and sources of comfort when there is little comfort to be found in our fragile world.