Rest (2024)

Amy Lange

Rest (2024)
Acrylic yarn, stuffing.
Lid not for sale, display only.

Inspired by: 

Barbara Anderson (Grandmother)

Toilet seat lid with owl (1970s)
Wood, yarn.
16”x13”

My grandmother, or Nana, as I call her, was always making things. Her most impressive medium, in my opinion, was needlepoint, and she did all our Christmas stockings and all kinds of throw pillows and other decor. But my favorite is this toilet seat lid she did in the 70s, which became a wall-hanging, and now belongs to me.

I wanted to respond to this work by my grandmother because I have always admired her skills and her talent for aesthetics. She turned many of her gendered domestic chores into art forms, which probably gave her joy in an otherwise overwhelmingly patriarchal home environment. Despite my life looking very different from hers, I have always felt that she understood me and encouraged my creativity from a young age. In a way, I feel like I’m living a life of freedom that she would have wanted, but only because she started the process by taking her creative impulses seriously, however bounded they were by the traditions of being a housewife. I’m finishing what she started.