Walk Map
Walk Map, 2022. Hand-dyed bedsheet, found fabric, thread, 64"x44".
I drew a floor plan from memory of every bedroom where I have ever slept onto a bedsheet that I used on my bed until it wore out, and dyed each of the bedrooms to be the color the room was painted while I lived in it. I then mapped the route of every way I have ever walked home, overlapping all of the starting points so they have the same origin point, regardless of where they began geographically. I started this project to feel connected to past homes in a new and unfamiliar place, and it became a way to spend time with and get to know this new place. The final stage of my process was overlaying each of the walks onto a map of Lawrence, KS, where I live now, and finding a way to reach each of the destinations with the paths available here.
Although this map reflects true information, I overlap different places and times, obscuring or confusing the original walks and rooms, but also revealing new patterns. The quilted map is also just big enough to cover (or obscure) me. I have arranged both the walks and the bedrooms to match with the cardinal directions, and through doing so have noticed patterns within the spaces in my own life, and made connections between ones that I would have thought were disparate if they were not physically overlapping.
