Helen & Alice at the Museum (2020)
Plastic webbing, landscape fabric, wood, and T-pins
Dimensions: 288” x 84” x 36”

Commissioned by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA) for the Inside/Out series, Helen & Alice at the Museum was installed on the exterior of the museum from February 2020 to March 2021. The work was later included in the exhibition Splendid Notions | Queer Textiles at the University of Northern Colorado, on view from November to December 2022 (curated by Bri Murphy and Belle-Pilar Fleming).

Frost was inspired by a collection of photographs featuring their great-aunt Helen and Helen’s partner of over forty years, Alice. In image after image, each woman appeared alone in their suburban Massachusetts home, always looking toward the other through the lens of the camera but never pictured together. A recurring detail in the photographs was a pair of unassuming lawn chairs, which Frost interpreted as symbolic stand-ins for the couple.

Motivated by a desire to bring Helen and Alice together in one shared space, Frost wove plastic webbing and landscape fabric, materials commonly used in lawn furniture, to create Helen & Alice at the Museum. Drawing on the queer motif of the inverted triangle, Frost used exaggerated scale and a simple woven pattern to give the couple a monumental presence. This sculptural tribute moved their relationship from the margins of personal and historical memory into a public conversation about partnership, visibility, and defying convention.