I Too Was Once A Child With Dreams

I usually create fiber pieces using natural materials. combining textures, creating tension between thick and thin, soft and hard, rough and smooth. Along with organic fibers, I am also intrigued by natural dyes: the soft, earthy colors that our ancestors learned to extract from plants, minerals and insects.

This piece is unlike any of my others. I conceived it after reading an newspaper article describing a San Francisco neighborhood where residents embedded large boulders in front of their homes to prevent people from sleeping there. Then I read that the City of San Francisco installed 400-pound boulders under the Cesar Chavez freeway underpass for the same reason, wishing these people would all go away. I thought first of creating a San Francisco map depicting the many homeless sites, but over time I simplified the image to a single young man who could be lying on the streets anywhere and everywhere in any city. None of us dream as little children that we will end up sleeping on the streets without a home. This young person could be you or me, your son or daughter, or mine, one of the over 8,000 people who live without a home in San Francisco. Vulnerable and exposed, each was once an innocent child with hopes and dreams of happiness.
I used materials commonly found on the streets, including scraps of a San Francisco newspaper which must have contained in it somewhere an article about the perpetual problem of those forced to sleep out in the cold.

(Note: The unframed piece is very light and is hung with magnets rather than conventional fixtures.)

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