The Great Basin Murders
Funded in part with grants from the Alexa Rose Foundation, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the Boise State University College of Arts and Sciences.
In this body of work I am handweaving burial shrouds to commemorate the victims of the Great Basin Murders. Using Fiberworks, a weaving software program I develop original weave patterns using data from each case including height, weight and age estimates as well as the date and GPS coordinates of when and where the victim was located. The density of the weaving communicates the postmortem interval. While this work is an attempt to broach the anonymity of unidentified human remains through devotional craft, the resulting woven panels remain visually austere illustrating the absence of information that characterizes many cold cases.
I am collaborating with Carrie Quinney who documents the woven shrouds at the sites where each victim was found, stylistically bridging crime scene documentation and landscape photography. These images position the shrouds as bodies, contextualizing the series in art historical movements considering violence against women from Renaissance and Baroque paintings to contemporary participatory art addressing social issues, all against the backdrop of the ever foreboding, mysterious and beautiful Western landscape.