Devon Avenue Sampler (2009-2013)

**Devon Avenue Sampler: Pay to Park**
Acrylic paint on hand sewn quilt, 60 x 60 in., 2011
**PURCHASE HERE**

The works in Devon Avenue Sampler were part of Indigo: Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina, which traveled to India at the RedEarth Gallery, Vadodora (2009); India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (2009); Nehru Art Centre, Mumbai (2010) and in the U.S. at ArtXChange Gallery in Seattle (2011); Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts in Miami, FL (2011); The Chicago Cultural Center (2013); and The Gandhi Memorial Center in Washington, DC (2013).

The exhibition has been featured or reviewed in India in ArtEtc., Art India, The Asian Age, Business Standard, Business Today, Deccan Herald, Design Today, DNA After Hrs, The Economic Times, Financial Express, Good Housekeeping, The Hindustan Times, Indian Express, New Woman, Open Magazine, The Pioneer, The Times of India and in Miami in El Nuevo Herald and as a “critic’s pick” at artCircuits.com.

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Indigo: New works by Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina (2010)

Artist Statement

Devon Avenue Sampler features vintage and contemporary street signs and imagery from my West Roger’s Park Chicago immigrant neighborhood where Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Christians all live. This all-American 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 blue colored thread and khadi fabric (two materials long associated with Mahatma Gandhi and symbolic of India’s Freedom Movement from British colonization) along with a sprinkling of Gujarat style mirrored bling and Jewish inspired prayer shawl 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 thus refers to both embroidery samplers and ”sampling” as in cultural appropriation.

I have also sewn patchwork canvases of dark blue fabrics and denim reminiscent in form to Japanese indigo boro quilts to reflect my own mixed ethnic heritage in the background. On these collage-like constructions I hand painted iconography from street signs in my neighborhood. From the 1930-1970s Devon Avenue was predominantly Jewish. South Asian migration eclipsed the Jewish community beginning in the 70s-80s and as newer groups continue to arrive the neighborhood remains in flux. The ethnic street signs record a quickly disappearing past as they collide, overlap, and fade into the present.

Devon Avenue Sampler has been funded in part by grants from DePaul University College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, University Research Council Grant, and funding from the Society of Vincent de Paul Professors. Special thanks to Pushpika Freitas, Lalita Monteiro and Shaily Agrawal of MarketPlace: Handwork of India for overseeing production of the embroidery work and the talented artisans of MarketPlace who made this work possible: Zabina Sheikh, Meera Singh, Rekha Sonawala, Haseena Qureshi, Ramila Solanki, Rabia Sheikh, Deepika Surti, and Mohammad Abur Kani.