2011, Dimensions: 8' x 13' x 8'/variable, Mixed Media (overdyed hamoi silk, white linen, cotton thread, wood, sand, 200+ symbolic crayon drawings printed onto 400+ canvas squares, black canvas squares, people.

pre-participation view partway through participation

About the Images: I am interested in our earliest and most universal symbolic images. To nod to the early aspect, I drew them in crayon. The iconic House is always the crayon house children draw. In the US and Britain it seems to be a red house with a peaked roof and a window on each side of the door, and we all recognise it. Many images shift across cultures, but many are surprisingly universal. I wanted images that were instantly recognisible as meaning something to nearly anyone, but which might invoke different associations and even some dissaggreement about their meaning. I wanted the participants and viewers to wrestle with some of the same obsticles I did when choosing the images. For example: the default for any figure is male- females are designated by skirts. Symbols and iconic images have the potential to expand again and again into more complex meanings and are something I often explore in my work. In this case I was interested in how people would use them to express ideas, to tell their stories, and in how they would be both read and mis-read.   Above you can see what may be things that make someone happy, a family's house being destroyed in a fire, and how to make bread... but that is my reading, it could be something else. There was a very wide range of stories from silly to tragic.     A sampling of the images that were printed onto the canvas squares:

About the Images: I am interested in our earliest and most universal symbolic images. To nod to the early aspect, I drew them in crayon. The iconic House is always the crayon house children draw. In the US and Britain it seems to be a red house with a peaked roof and a window on each side of the door, and we all recognise it. Many images shift across cultures, but many are surprisingly universal. I wanted images that were instantly recognisible as meaning something to nearly anyone, but which might invoke different associations and even some dissaggreement about their meaning. I wanted the participants and viewers to wrestle with some of the same obsticles I did when choosing the images. For example: the default for any figure is male- females are designated by skirts. Symbols and iconic images have the potential to expand again and again into more complex meanings and are something I often explore in my work. In this case I was interested in how people would use them to express ideas, to tell their stories, and in how they would be both read and mis-read.