This is a scale prototype of the clock on my studio wall.
This is one of the 24 total columns that is laced with fiber optics. 22 beads long and 120 beads wide.
infographic made to explain design plan for the original clock structure.
“the clock” was born from a 365-day project where i made a bead patch everyday for a year. little did i know that the year would end 2 weeks before a worldwide pandemic. this prompted me to reconsider “essential workers” and redefine the value of labor into my own terms.
365 days of patches video
this is where it all started. i had the capitalist mindset of “i must create. more. more. more. if i want to be successful. i must work myself to the bone or i am not doing everything i can to make it.” and then i fulfilled my inner challenge, only to be given a pandemic at the end of it. i then realized how quickly everything can disappear. the money problems i had before the pandemic were magnified, and my lack of money management skills came to fruition when i received unemployment. what was now essential? how can i exist in a digital realm? how is Kentucky’s minimum wage still $7.25…??? all of these questions made me rethink the hour-a-day i spent embroidering these patches. how much was that worth? in monetary value but also on a personal level, how was working myself to the bone, punching in on a subconscious clock once a day for a year, worth it at all? especially when my regular means of presenting my work was now quarantined until further notice?