The Scarlet Thread

Photo by Tammy Byron

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Mr. Mann Act himself, Jack Johnson and U is for Uppity.

Posted by Lauren Gillette at 8:00 PM

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About those trampy quilts...

Witnessing the contention and pejorative vocabulary of the 2012 presidential election take on the shape of a '50s diorama, I wondered how this atmosphere informed the future for my college-aged daughter and all the young women I have watched grow up.

I began gathering stories of public and private excess and how these situations were viewed within the context of their day to lend perspective and structure to the Hester Prynne drumbeat going on around me.

The Scarlet Thread is a deconstructed alphabet quilt series of 52 of history's libertines, whose behavior fell outside the lines, and publicly did or did not get what was coming to them. From Mary Magdalene to President Clinton, each story highlights a different element in the familiar tales of sexual misadventure and public aspersion to explore the symbiotic relationship between public and private behavior, titillation and scorn, the judges and the judged.

About Me

Lauren Gillette: I am a conceptual artist whose work has underlying threads: biography, history, text, repetition and memory. And let’s put a big fat underline under biography, because that is the thread that runs through all the work. Biography. With each project I am attempting to bear witness. When Marvin Gaye called out, 'Can I get a witness?' I heard the call. And have felt the gravitational pull of projects that allow me to collect, chronicle and archive, tell and retell. I am working to reveal something emotive and intimate about each subject. My intent is to spark that last piece of the puzzle, a visceral thread of recognition in the viewer. Check out my work at laurengillette.com

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Art costs people.

The work of The Scarlet Thread would not have been possible without the 2014 Artist Advancement Grant from the kind folks at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation