Industry Unraveled is Lauren Davies’ visual exploration into post-industrial abandonment and decay throughout the Rust Belt threaded into the New Economy’s web-based Wal-mart culture.
Lauren seeks out and photographs visually compelling locations in Detroit, Buffalo, Youngstown and Cleveland, then engages Wal-mart’s on-line services through which her images are reproduced as woven photographs. Most typically used to present kitschy images of puppies and kittens or graduation and baby portraits, this Wal-Mart process offers Lauren a starting point for re-working the digitally woven cotton-thread images. These labor-intensive handcrafted techniques include dyeing and bleaching sections of an image; cutting, sewing and combining portions of cloth to create collage and dimensional sections in the overall work; and then selectively removing threads from the woven image. The result is a unique dematerialized photograph-infused textile that slips away from its context and history into an accumulation of threads cascading onto the floor.
