Back in 2002, I made this book: ‘The Truth Remains’, for the San Francisco Public Library’s ‘Reversing Vandalism’ project.
That was a one-of-a-kind fiber art piece about silencing marginalized populations, but the text continued to resonate with me years later.
In December of 2017, my own high school went through a school shooting that left two innocent students and the shooter dead.
Then the Parkland shooting happened. #NeverAgain happened, and the MarchForOurLives.
Honestly, I have a tiny bit of hope for our future. I’d worried that a steady diet of YA dystopias might make the Millennial and Aughts generations less-inclined to create a positive future. What they seem to have learned from Potter, Hunger Games, etc. is teamwork, conviction, and really scary-good social media skills.
I’m so proud of them for pushing back, when the best we older liberals could manage was ‘Lean In’, and the Boomers essentially sold their souls to would-be dictators and conmen.
When I made ‘Continental Divide’ in 2004, I had no idea I’d look back on the Cheney/Rove era with some perplexed fondness. They were crooks managing an incompetent president, but they were at least efficient and capable crooks.
I decided to release ‘The Truth Remains’ as a second version in an edition of five fiber art books. They’ll be 7″x50″, with ten accordion-fold pages on each side, and double-sided. That gives me 20 pages plus fabric covers…a lot of room to cover! Think of embroidering a 70″x50″ quilt, and that’s about the amount of work I’ll be putting on on these books.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be showing progress pictures. The books will blend digitally altered and sketched maps of US mass shooting locations, my embroidered text, patriotic commercial fabric appliques and printed fabric, and metal embellishments (pewter assault rifle charm pendants are available online). It’s about gun control policies, the racist reaction to the Obama presidency, and the culture wars simmering in the United States.
Plus I get to snark at the NRA, its overtly political mandate, its ties to US white supremacy and Christian theocratic movements, and its disturbing links with the same groups in Europe and Russia.
