RUNNER
Everyone deserves a voice in the conversation and a seat at the table.
by InterArtist Jen Haefeli
A Wild Root Creations® Fiber Art Creation
September – October, 2024
Co-Crafting Democracy, Fiber Art & Activism
University Gallery at Rochester University of Technology, Rochester, New York
November 13 – December 14, 2024
The Artists’ Statement for Runner is as follows:
Please share your voices, home-cooked food, and raise confident children. Build longer tables, not higher walls. Our diverse cultures can be inclusive if we trust in challenges and recognize our foundations. This land was not made for you or me. We can all be responsible, respectful inhabitants.
The collection of pieces to create Runner began on September 1, 2024, when I returned from a trip to Seneca Falls, New York. I gathered pieces of cloth remnants and fabrics from projects I’ve worked on in the past, along with clothing and fiber pieces. I found special things around my home, like small Christmas stockings and clothing my children wore when they were little, dress shirts that my husband tore, and stained items containing memories that felt they needed to be a part of this work. I created a graphic I placed online requesting the like from family and friends. Then I set to work.
Runner was assembled by machine using the pieces of reclaimed, upcycled remnants and given works upwards of one hundred years old from countries around the world. It is embellished with hand-written text on both sides. Each end contains a scroll-like fold-over slip with a removable piece of wooden doweling for hanging and rolling. A linen-covered cardboard cylinder is placed in the center when the piece is rolled to allow for tying the runner for closure.
Runner is missing. On October 21, 2024, it was shipped to Rochester with the expectation that like many shipments that have reliably arrived at their expected destination, it would arrive safely on October 24, 2024.
The last known destination is the location where the box it was contained in for shipping was initially scanned in for the shipment to be initiated. There is no additional information on the whereabouts of the piece.
Runner is 185’ 6” long x 20” wide when it is fully unrolled. It weighs 37 lbs. to the ounce. When it was shipped, it was contained in a cardboard box measuring 22” x 26” x 16” with no markings aside from the tape, ground shipping label, and black Sharpie in my handwriting indicating with arrows where to safely open the box.
An unknown number of hours were spent creating Runner. On average, the piece remained the central creation worked on day and night from September 1, 2024, until October 20, 2024, when it was weighed, measured, photographed for the last time, and boxed for shipment. An estimate of the time spent in the fifty days creating it is four hundred hours, an average of approximately eight hours per day.
Though the status of Runner is unknown, many people have already come together to share expressions of sadness and frustration over the loss of this piece they have not had an opportunity to see. In a way, the intended goal of the work has been accomplished. Runner has brought people of different ages, from many different countries and cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, belief systems, religions, and who would never have known one another together through hope. A hope that Runner is not lost, but is somehow traveling the world, and will return one day.
Pieces from Runner began the journey of becoming Runner in different ways throughout time. They came to me in humble ways. Some were scraps. Others in yards.
A clipping that I placed on the top flap is a piece clipped from the back panel of the inside of a pale blue, floral, handmade linen dress made by a seamstress in Haiti. The blue dress was owned by my Great-Grandmother Ruth. She wore it with pearls and sandals. It is positioned near a deep ocean blue sequin clipping removed from the dress of a young woman who is a multi-crown title winner. She is more than a mere beauty. She is a force. We both love Haiti and miss our home away from home. My sweet husband’s pink shirt sleeve and a clipping from a shirt I wore while I was pregnant are all visible to whoever opens the box to reveal Runner as the content.
The un-stretched canvas and beautifully stitched quilts of an artist who passed away in July 2024, Joselyn, are an incredible inclusion. Joselyn was a talented textile artist and college professor who collected textiles and taught about them extensively. The handmade pieces included in Runner were collected as far back as the 1980’s in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, and Indonesia. In addition to these gems of creation given to me by her sister Lucinda, Joselyn’s personal work was a true gift to place in Runner, and I am thankful for the precious inclusion of these works.
Runner was created using a wide variety of items, like vintage bed sheets given to me by a friend I knew in Charlotte, North Carolina. These patterns are as charming as the handmade skill seen in the work from Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Haiti, Hawaii, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Syria. I included a clipping of Chinese Dragon Material left over from a costume that I made for my nephew. A pashmina and Basmati rice bag from India. A warming cloth traditionally used for food that was sent from a friend celebrating her Mexican heritage. My friend Nancy gave me doilies, two table runners, and two of her children’s pillowcases for Runner.
I am Swiss-American. My Catholic husband was born in Kwangju, S. Korea. Together, we have five children. Three are Haitian. Our two girls are pure fire. My stepfather is a Polish & Ukrainian Jew. My mother is British. My father is Swiss-German. My only brother is from Calcutta, India. My in-laws are both as Irish as they come. My stepmother was raised in S. Utah, several hours from where I was born in SLC, Utah. My father converted to Mormon when they met. I have hundreds of Mormon family members on this side. My sisters have left the church, as have cousins. Read about the “Lost Boys” in areas of Arizona, Nevada, S. Utah, and parts of Mexico, and help them if and how you can. My stepfather’s brother converted to follow the Mennonite faith in his early 20’s, and his nine children follow different sub-sets of the Christian, Christian-Mennonite faiths and communities. In our home, we celebrate Christian, Jewish, and Haitian holidays. Some of the people closest to me are Syrian and Iranian. We are a global family.
If Runner were to be utilized for our family events, it would need to be at least quadrupled to allow for all members of our extended family to be represented in one sitting.
It is my hope that Runner returns. We will celebrate and invite many to sit down over it. It will be shared. It will be lengthened. It will travel again.
Meanwhile, I love that we will begin the process of #RebuildTheRunner starting with this wonderful group of people. Thank you for embracing this work and the messages that I placed inside of it. Thank you for inspiring this piece via this exhibition.
Together, let’s all #RebuildTheRunner
