Beating Heart

Jillian Crochet

2014

Steel, Acrylic Yarn

10'x'6'x6

This installation explores the diversity of movement and expression through simplified human anatomy. Its hoop skirt armature cites the bodily constraints of Enlightenment era fashion and early medicine. The material dialogue between the work's hard steel infrastructure and soft acrylic yarn reflects the incredible power and vulnerability of the human heart. Invoking the human body's most primordial engine, an organic metronome ticking our minute-to-minute existence, Beating Heart also manifests a deeply personal encounter with the ephemeral. Yarn highlights intimacy and material transience, even as it examines the historical relationship between female identity and craft.

A deep red heart, woven in crochet, suspended from the ceiling, stretches 6 feet across in diameter. Darker red blood vessels pattern its interior. Red light from two different directions filters through the hanging sculpture and cast patterned shadows on the gallery floor. . Photo credit: Richard Lomibao

From a close perspective just on the sculpture's periphery, a crocheted cell frames a visitor's smiling face in red light. Image credit: Richard Lomibao

Clad in black with soft curls framing her face, the artist sits in an electric wheelchair in front of the crocheted sculpture and looks into the camera. Image credit: Richard Lomibao

Visitors interact with My Beating Heart, lifting its skirt to enter its red embrace as others look on. Image credit: Richard Lomibao