Keep Out

During my 25 years of living in the same neighbourhood, I decided to get to know my 35 neighbours by engaging them in a community art project. After I failed attempt, I reevaluated what it means to be part of a community. Through quilting images drawn from three of 35 participants, I screen printed and stitched them together to form a quilt to reinforced traditional ideas of what a quilt provides: warmth and community.

Conventionally, quilts have been produced by multiple people simultaneously. This generates conversation, friendship, and community, which is what I had hoped for by seeking out participants from my neighbours. I felt dismayed as I longed for a tangible community. I felt that in interacting with my neighbours, I was violating their physical space. Is it possible that in my life the only community I will have is virtual? I have paired the quilt with passive-aggressive messages that reflect my feelings reaching out to my direct community. Keep Out is passive-aggressive statement, because I feel as if lives are shared freely and virtual spaces on the Internet, yet to now have a physical community has almost become an invasion of privacy.