keyhole residency
In the late summer of 2023 I was invited to set up my studio in the Ely Center of Contemporary Art as one of three inaugural artists in the Keyhole Residency. Over six weeks I worked with and in the building, inspired by its bubbling walls, peeling doors, incidental blues, and dancing light. The residency culminated in the group show Home (November 12, 2023 - January 14, 2024).
Home is a rich theme for an exhibition in a gallery that is a former home, the early 20th century Elizabethan-style John Slade Ely house. The building’s historically registered name comes from a man who lived in it for a handful of years. His wife Grace Taylor Ely, however, called the building home for half a century. She is also the person who created a trust to make it a center for art after her death.
This tension between presence, gender, and naming informed the work I contributed to the show.
The lace that appears in the cyanotypes belonged to my great-grandmother, whose career outside the home came to a halt when she was married in the early 1900s. She lived the last years of her life in the attic of my mother’s childhood home sewing and mending clothes for the family.
