Helen & Alice at the Museum (2020-Present)

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 Splendid Notions | Queer Textiles at the University of Northern Colorado (November–December 2022), curated by Bri Murphy and Belle-Pilar Fleming, and was shown again in 2023 at East Window Gallery.

I developed this work from a collection of photographs of my great-aunt Helen and her partner of over forty years, Alice. In these images, each of them appeared alone in their suburban Massachusetts home, often looking toward the other through the camera’s lens but never pictured together. A pair of lawn chairs showed up again and again, and I began to understand them as stand-ins for the couple.

Using plastic webbing and landscape fabric, materials commonly used in lawn furniture, I translated those references into a large-scale woven installation. I used a simple pattern and exaggerated scale, drawing on the inverted triangle, to give Helen and Alice a shared presence in public space. The work moved their relationship out of the private archive and into a broader conversation about partnership, visibility, and queer history.

I returned to this work in Helen and Alice Have a Grandchild (2024), a five-minute performance built around a handwoven dress made from the same lawn chair materials (70 × 20 × 20 inches) and paired with size 12 go-go boots adorned with artificial flowers. Wearing the dress, I performed as an imagined grandchild of Helen and Alice, telling the story of their life together with humor and care.

This performance extended the installation into the body. It let me move inside the work and bring Helen and Alice into presence, carrying their relationship forward through material, story, and speculation.

Images of the artist by Ash Stafford, 2024
Archival image of chair and garden by Helen Smith, 1967