Border People: Lupe Rests

The Border People series was inspired by the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, a 1916 collection of more than 240 interlocking poems about the lives and deaths of individuals in a small town.

I think we find shelter and comfort and belonging from unexpected places. My regular runs in the cemetery allow me the chance to see the animals of the desert and get a full view of the mountains, and I feel watched over by them both.

Over the past year, I've progressed from being, "who's that driving the silver Subaru?" to "that girl from the Trail," to "that friend of Paul's and Sheila's who hangs out at the coffee shop every now and then." When the local newspaper interviewed me recently, they called me, "our own." The guy at the hardware store calls me, "Miss Nobles," as does the lady at the bank. And I've learned to recognize other community members by sight--the doctor, the Baptist preacher, the lady with the flowershop who is married to the assistant postmaster, the lady at the gas station who lives off the grid and totes her water in by truck.

This is "Border People: Lupe Rests." And the stitching reveals the words: "Lupe Rests. They never asked her name, but they watched over her."

"Lupe" is one of the pieces on display at SOFA Chicago last weekend. I made it deliberately rumpled and soft-looking like bed linen. Most of it is a beautifully rough, slightly irridescent silk stitched together by hand. I appliqued silks, cotton, velvet (around the edges), felt, hand-dyed ribbon. Lupe is mostly hand-embroidered with some machine-embroidery on her bodice. Her skirt came from my favorite rayon dress, which finally utterly wore out after many years of service. Most fun for me, was hand-painting artificial flower blossoms with transparent and irridescent textile paint. I sewed them on the piece with french knots. All in all, the piece is approximately 13" x 18", one of my largest ever.