Laura Kina Devon Avenue Sampler Artist Statement

Devon Avenue Sampler features street signs and imagery from my Chicago immigrant neighborhood where Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Christians all live. This urban South Asian/Jewish corridor is lined with jewelers, ethnic grocery stores, bakeries, spice shops, restaurants, colorful sari shops, travel & tour services, cell phone/electronics/luggage shops, beauty shops advertising eye brow threading and mehndi, and a base ball field.

Using indigo dyed thread on khadi fabric (two materials long associated with Mahatma Gandhi and symbolic of India’s Freedom Movement from British colonization) along with a generous dose of Gujarat style mirrored bling and Jewish inspired tassels, my samplings of Devon Avenue’s poly-cultural street signs have been hand embroidered by artisans from MarketPlace: Handwork of India. MarketPlace is a fair trade women’s collective based in Mumbai. The use of the word the word ''sampler'' in the series title Devon Avenue Sampler thus refers to both embroidery samplers and ''sampling'' as in cultural appropriation.

In a cumulative work of the same title as the series, Devon Avenue Sampler, I sewed a patchwork canvas of dark blue fabrics and denim reminiscent in form to Edo and Meiji period Japanese boro quilts that were made from mended patchworks of indigo fabrics.
On this collage-like construction I hand painted the iconography from the hand embroidered works along with additional imagery from street signs in my neighborhood. My family is Okinawan, originally from Hawai’i, and my great-grandparents used to wear indigo kasuri fabrics while working on the sugar cane plantation. This series let me think about indigo in relation to my family's past agricultural life and present life as an urban artist and convert to Judaism.

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Devon Ave. Sampler Acrylic on fabric 53x77 in., 2009