“An event like Covid is a reminder of how fragile and yet necessary are the societal ties that link us.”
About Alison
Architect and artist, Alison Wright started out in historic restoration and reuse of buildings in which she often incorporated art interventions. Eventually the art work itself became the focus, exploring issues such as feminism in the form of a barbed wire skirt and the environment with trees made of old growth telephone poles. Her artwork has been found in the ocean, on doors of public buildings, in parades, parking lots, swimming pools and on iPhones, taking the form of an app, sculpture, architecture and photography.
She has given a TEDx Talk (Curiosity in the space between), been involved in several exhibitions including Heroes History Pins and Guns, a solo show. She is a graduate of USC and SciARC and taught at Otis Art Institute. Her work has been featured in the L.A. Times, Metropolis and international publications as well as on the Discovery Channel. Her public art is catalogued with the Smithsonian Art Inventory.
“While sheltering in place in Hawaii during Covid, I was inspired by a quilt large enough to comfort a country, created by the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili’uokalani. During her house imprisonment in the royal palace in 1893 after a coup d’etat by American businessmen, she was an imprisoned outsider in her own palace, in her own country. The sense of imprisonment in your own home, in your own country is one that I think many of us felt during the pandemic.
Since statehood, Hawaii has lost its previous self-sustaining model for feeding its inhabitants. Hence the state of Hawaii now imports 80% of foodstuffs and experienced food scarcity during Covid — rice for instance was rationed. For this reason the plastic tabs on the resealable bags of rice took on a greater importance to me and I began saving them with the expectation of creating a “quilt” that responded to the pandemic confinement. Having saved the scraps through the year of Covid, I fashioned them into “quiltettes” and collaborated with Jeanie Chong to adapt them for the storefront at Helms.
We now know how fast the conventional order of our lives can change. The Outsider Quilt celebrates community, how fragile yet necessary living in the society of others truly is.”
– Alison Wright
cargocollective.com/alisonwrightarchitect
instagram.com/awrightarchitect
On display for one week beginning 8.6.21
Helms Design Center at 8745 Washington Boulevard
All artwork is copyrighted work of the artist. All rights reserved. Images not to be used without permission.
