Blake Sanders | Home Bound

Home Bound expresses the pride, anxiety, and comfort family provides. The pandemic—paired with a new baby born weeks premature—has fed a desire to hunker down with my family till viral and political storms pass, awash socially and creatively. At the same time, our growing family has only strengthened my resolve that the best way to assure happy, healthy kids is to create bonds with and promote an equitable future for neighbors, community, and society at large. Currently that manifests as keeping our distance and wearing masks when leaving goodies or having chats to show care for other’s health. I reject the trope “good fences make good neighbors”, itself meant to be ironic at its inception, preferring a literal and metaphorical neighborhood that respects privacy but rejects partitions that make it easier to think of the folks on the other side as dangerous or less than.

Parenthood provokes a heightened awareness of every moment, which in turn has motivated a shift in the content of my work to emphasize our culpability in consumption. This illustrates the lasting impact of waste through the use of imagery of my children as a stand-in for humanity's impulsive, short-sighted nature. My creative practice has also evolved to include greener, thriftier practices, to reduce impact, and to model behaviors for a more sustainable future.

Most of the materials that comprise these works are repurposed: from the fabric passed down from quilting friends and family or recycled from previous projects, to the inks left behind by students in the collective studio stash, to the printed curtains comprised of donated, decommissioned hotel linens. The conservation employed in these projects challenges the “every family for themselves” mindset, instead promoting a practice that ensures there are resources for all and messes for no one in the neighborhood.

Register for Artist Talk
3:00PM (EST) Wednesday, April 7, 2021