When I set the prompt of ‘isolation’ I had a completely different idea for my work based on the Grand Canyon. However, as I started to design my piece I kept going back to my trip to New York City and the millions of people moving in and out of the city on a daily basis. For example it is estimated that 6 million people go through Penn St Station on a daily basis. This was fascinating to me given my country, New Zealand, only has a population of 5 million people! So as we walked the streets amongst the crowds each day I wondered how many were actually alone in this great city?

This led me in a completely different direction. I searched my photos and found this one I had taken from the top of our hotel. I thought about the bright lights and the thousands of rooms just in this one view and wondered how many were in their room that night sitting alone, wondering what life was about and missing their loved ones. What stories did they have to tell?

How would I visualise this in cloth? I searched my hand made fabrics and found some that I felt reflected light – a yellow piece that I had then folded and indigo dyed – its perfect and if you look closely you might see the image of a tower or a fighter jet coming from the folds! Another fabric I had dyed and overpainted with circles suggested to me the people walking the streets, going down the stairs into Penn St Station – lots of heads all going about their own journey usually oblivious to the person beside them.

So in parts of the work I have the bright lights but in others the mood is more sombre represented by the darker, more muted tones. I then wanted to highlight the idea of people being along in their rooms so I fused rectangles, made out of the circle fabric, in various sizes over the quilt top and then quilted these in a yellow/lime thread with ‘X’ to represent them being pinned inside their room all alone. I feel that you walk from the bottom of the quilt up through the lights of the city without recognising those walking beside you.