Pandemic Pullovers (2020—)
By
Daniela Vaughan
'I Got The Blues' (2020). An image taken from the back of a woman wearing a navy cardigan, embroidered in pale blue thread. The embroidered text reads ‘I got the blues’, ‘March 2020-?’, ‘Rule of Six’. Photograph credit: Dave Usher
A project uniting the community in expressing emotions through stitch onto pullovers as a distraction from a global pandemic.
In March 2020 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson made the unprecedented announcement, "Stay at home, this is a national emergency". News headlines followed describing our confinement as a 'prison' and 'loss of freedom'.
After three days of anguish and not being able to see how these restrictions would unfold, I expressed my frustrations in stitch onto seven different coloured jumpers inspired by the rainbows in windows and my Pandemic Pullovers project was born. Through our street’s social network and by creating a Facebook page I was able to rotate the jumpers to others using my daily exercise allowance to deliver to participants’ doorsteps.
Surprisingly, I discovered some people 'loved this new normal' slower daily pace of time to discover nature and new interests. Overall, the project acted as both a distraction from the surrounding chaos and order in the form of routine, repetition and reliability of the familiar.
“One fast moving response to the Covid-19 crisis has been Danielle Vaughan’s Pandemic Pullover Project 2020. This is a collaborative work for which the artist has passed woollen jumpers around her community, inviting them to stitch messages into the wool. The resulting expressions of hope and despair, often in contradiction with each other, are the threads which run through these wearable canvases, offering human warmth, even in the midst of a Winter lockdown.”
More information: http://dvaughangallery.com/
If you would like to get involved, get in touch, it's not over till Covid ends. Also if you have any exhibition opportunities for the jumpers, i'd love to hear from you.
