I was invited Commissioned by The Cradle Project to make a “Cradle” to raise money for an AIDS relief effort for children in West Africa.

One hundred percent of the funds were sent directly to communities that had been decimated by AIDS but were considered too small or out of the way to receive aid from their governments. 

My Cradle is inspired by 19th Century beehives or skeps. I wanted to make a coiled form reminiscent of the process employed by communal insects like bees and mud dauber wasps. The hive is a place of safety, built by the community.

Cradle uses the process of coiling to investigate a spontaneous form that is a container—a place of safety made with ordinary domestic materials, whose symbolic power lies in their familiar childhood associations.

The Salt Coils are the next step in the process that started with Cradle.

I wanted to keep using the organic coiled forms, reminiscent of insects and ammonites. The sewn cotton clothesline is sprayed with layers of saline to form a hard shell. Other coils are dipped in saline to grow crystals embedded in the fibers.