Jen Grasso
1. Response to ‘Mini-task 7: A Year in Pictures'
Title: Flight.
May 2020
35mm C-print.
I have never experienced ‘fight or flight’ like I have in lockdown. I couldn’t have predicted this subconscious urge to flee, to be free, to not feel trapped. I have been fortunate enough, however, to live near wide open spaces, which I herded my children into regularly for their ‘daily walk’ because of course, they too didn’t want to feel trapped either. This picture is of my daughter running as fast as she could into the wind into a wide open sky on one of these adventures. Looking back on a year of pictures, this picture is both the antithesis to lockdown and the epitome of needing to feel free.
2. Warp Weft Patchwork
56" x 80"
35mm C-prints
This piece is part of a larger project entitled 'Quilts' that utilises the framework of patchwork quilts as a means to cope with, as well as represent, the domestic roles and motherhood in lockdown. By photographing details of my domestic interior I have aimed to reclaim the domestic space into a patchwork design that gives ode and homage to traditional handicraft and domestic labour. I have a much more elaborate and detailed explanation here that provides a background into the history of patchwork quilting as well as the mental health benefits of traditional handicrafts that have made this project one of the ways in which I have coped with lockdown. If you do follow the link, you can see that not only is this an ongoing project, it's also a mixed-media project that utilises different photographic media as well as textiles, and is very much an ongoing series and work(s) in progress.
Inspired by the warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads that are the components in plain weaving, this double sized photographic quilt repurposes everyday surfaces, interiors, textures, patterns and shapes into a kaleidoscopic domestic quilt. With the inability to change my environment, I changed the way I interacted with, and reinterpreted, my domestic environment, as a means to creatively cope with lockdown and my domestic roles throughout this time.