Warm Memory
My intention with this installation was to create an experience for the audience that allowed them to feel the community networks and connections that anchor individuals to a neighborhood. Giving physicality to the invisible ties that bind and create our home within the community.
May-June 2015
“One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.” – Herman Hesse
This piece was a site-specific installation created in the Hairpin Arts Center, a flat-iron building at the heart of the 6 corner intersection of Milwaukee/Diversey/Kimball. The house-like structure was modeled to fit exactly in the pie-shaped corner of the space and its perspective.
40,000 linear feet of string was used to create the idea of a home that the audience could walk inside of and experience the shift of scale and perspective as they moved toward the nose of the building that looks directly out on to the Logan Square neighborhood.
Strings connected the structure and the walls of the space, making it feel like it was connected neighborhood outside the windows.
The process of creating the piece became a reinforcing metaphor of what a home means: the collection of relationships, memories, love, support and feeling of security and comfort.
I listened to hours of people’s stories about how it made them feel, how they’ve seen the neighborhood change, memories of their homes (past & present), how it felt like a ceremonial space, etc. It evoked a comfortable space where people could feel honest, much like they feel in their home.
When the piece was activated by the public, that idea of home widened for us all. The piece mimicked the physical space of a house, yet did not provide any of the physical protection of the elements like a house would.
Children ran through it and touched it. People meditated in it and bands played music in it. Individuals told me what it meant to them and shared feelings that it evoked as they experienced it.
Media & Thanks
April 9th, 2015, Chicago Reader: Re<new>all Arts page feature by Aimee Levitt
June 18, 2015, Sixty Inches From Center Interview From I to We: Arts, Gentrification, and Community Building in Logan Square by Jennifer Patiño Cervantes
A special thank you to the Hairpin Arts Center, Nando Espinosa Herrera, Brian Herrera, Peaceflowartistry, Stacy Petersen, Pei San Ng, David Eddie, Kristina Klein, Pam Debord, Joe DeBord, Dan Russell and Justin Vaughn for your support, love, lending hands