What Makes It Home - PlatteForum AIR Spring ‘24

Postcard designed by David Grajeda Gonzalez

I was the Spring 2024 Artist in Residence at PlatteForum, located in Denver. This “competitive international program, one of the first of its kind in Colorado, provides artists with the time, space, and support to create new work, explore new mediums, and share their creations with the community. Each resident artist's practice and the work produced during their residency address social justice issues, welcoming any creative discipline. During their residency, artists have full access to PlatteForum’s studio space and are required to lead workshops with ArtLab interns and other youth-serving groups, culminating in exhibitions and/or performances in collaboration with the youth.”

I am deeply grateful for the staff at PlatteForum, who were absolutely amazing to work with. Many of them are artists as well, so click through the link above to check them out. I have also listed below all the amazing people and local orgs who contributed tools, materials, or expertise to this show.

I spent my studio time exploring new materials, combining them with textile techniques like cross stitch, lace making, beading, and quilting. These explorations resulted in an immersive & interactive installation that explored the notion of home and the porous space where interior/exterior, private/public intersect in myriad ways.

With the students, we first spent time discussing what home is, what it means, where it exists, etc. Then, we spent time playing with a wide range of materials, from upholstery foam to flagging tape, moving blankets to cardboard, styrofoam to children’s toys. From there, we started thinking about how materials function, both their physical limitations and metaphorical meaning, and how those can be manipulated in space in an installation. Students chose how their project would relate to the overall installation; my goal was for the work to flow seamlessly, and be fully integrated with the pieces I made.

What Makes It Home — final installation

"What Makes it Home"

Exhibited at PlatteForum, Artist in Residency, Spring 2024.
2575 Ringsby Ct, Denver CO. Exhibition dates: May 3 - May 29, 2024.

This installation explores the notion of “home” as a site for dialogue about socio-political issues. Through an immersive and interactive installation, we invite you to settle in and engage with objects, materials, and settings as an intersection of private and public space. How are shelter, health, and safety inextricable from each other and our constantly shifting economic and political contexts? In the midst of growing housing crises, refugees seeking asylum, genocidal conflict, and the ongoing effects of a global pandemic, can we expand our ideas and beliefs about “home” to radically welcome not only other people, but also fully embrace our own selves? How do we reanimate our most intimate spaces to admit these places of dialogue and conflict, illness and healing, and cohabitation of private and public selves?

special thanks to

and also

Much gratitude to the many people in the Denver metro area who generously provided materials through FB Marketplace and Craigslist. And a big shout out to ReCreative Denver, ArtParts Creative ReUse Center in Boulder, and repurposedMATERIALS in Lafayette for promoting the use of discarded items. As a result, many of the materials in this exhibition were made possible.

Video walkthrough of the installation.