I’m With Her, 2019

58" x 98"

Stenciled, commercially available cotton fabrics, embroidery floss. Machine pieced and appliquéd; hand quilted. Photo credit: Jean Vong.

Commissioned by John M. Walsh III for his "Fibers of Change" project.

The grave and beautiful Statue of Liberty welcomed my immigrant forebears to America--the golden land--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, she appears as two images from an old school film contact sheet.

Liberty holds her torch aloft against a patchwork background spelling out Emma Lazarus’s poem, "The New Colossus." Crowned with a pussy hat, she also raises her fist against a welter of notes left by impassioned citizens in support of immigrants and women’s empowerment. She embodies both the promise of America, and the enduring need for patriotic, civic engagement.

The viewer is encouraged to consider what happened between these two, non-sequential frames of film.



More background about inspirations might include: The Statue of Liberty is practically a neighbor; I often walk the few blocks to wave to her out in New York harbor. I'm an a/v geek from way back, so it was fun to be able to reference analog film technology--and it was a natural way to include a sequence of images, suggesting a narrative unfolding over time. Not long before the 2016 election, I was skimming the NY Times and saw an article about Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. As I quickly glanced at the accompanying photo, so quickly that it registered subliminally--I thought, "OMG, there's a quilt on the wall!"--but I had completely misunderstood the image. It was actually dozens of differently colored notes with positive messages, affixed there by her staff. In my haste, I had misread the irregular geometric pattern as a patchwork quilt. In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, that wall of colored papers connected visually to the communal expressions I saw at Union Square subway station, www.subwaytherapy.com. Of course, "I'm With Her" is a play on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign slogan, but as the piece began to take shape mentally, it became less about the election, and more about the idea of America. One of the first outrages committed by the new administration centered on immigrants and immigration, so that was much on my mind. As the iconic embodiment of welcome, the Statue of Liberty is a perfect shorthand for idealistic and hopeful American values, not to mention, a symbol of my beloved hometown.