For a family living on the financial edge, it doesn’t take much to upset a delicate balance. Illness, or even bad weather, can tip the balance and send a family that has been scraping to get by into homelessness. According to NPR, 2.5 million children in the US are homeless at any given time. Some are in shelters, some are couch-surfing with friends and relations, some are living in the family car. Some are on the streets. These are hard topics, interpreted in a soft medium.
Hanging By A Thread is a metaphor for this situation. It depicts a tree, made of scrap fabric and dressmaker off-cuts, held together with thread and primitive stitching. Our society expects the poor to be content with the leftovers and scraps they are given, whether those are adequate or not. The piece is held together with a web of thread; if a few threads are cut or broken, the entire structure will collapse. The piece was designed to be hung in a way that it can be looked through, much as the poor are looked past by an average person. The piece is mostly black, with a few brighter spots.
