- Title
- Hands at Work Film
- Date Made
- 2016
- Medium
- 16mm polyester film, cotton-wrapped polyester thread, lithography ink
- Dimensions
- 68 1/8 × 45 in. (173.04 × 114.3 cm)
Framed: 74 × 50 5/8 × 6 11/16 in. (187.96 × 128.59 × 16.99 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2020.80
- Collecting Area
- Decorative Arts and Design
- Curatorial Notes
Sabrina Gschwandtner is an LA-based artist who works at the intersection of new media and traditional craft. For many years she has mined a collection of discarded 16mm short textile documentaries made between about 1950 and 1980. As she explained, "Not only had the movies’ subject matter - mostly that of women creating textiles - been deemed unworthy of archiving, but some of the film had faded or discolored, adding an additional layer of valuelessness." In a subversive act meant to celebrate the undervalued histories of women’s work, Gschwandtner arranged the rescued footage in compositions based on historical American quilt patterns and joined the strips together on her sewing machine. Gschwandtner uses two media that have both become obsolete but are also being embraced by a new generation of artists eager to capitalize on their inherent quality and "slowness." Neither a film nor a textile, Gschwandtner’s Hands at Work series defies these categorical boundaries.
Bobbye Tigerman, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, 2020
- Selected Bibliography
- Adamson, Glenn, and Jen Padgett. Crafting America: Artists and Objects, 1940 to Today. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2021.
