‘Stitches in Time’ tells two stories. The first is visible: Hyper-saturated and colorful cones of thread float in reflections of impossibly blue sky and cloud evoking the distance between memory and time. The intersection of Rantoul Steet and Elliot Street in Beverly, Massachusetts, where this light was foraged, has been home to countless working families and their businesses for generations.

‘In 1903 Beverly became the site of the United Shoe Machinery Corporation (USMC), a company that designed and manufactured machines for making shoes. The machines were distributed worldwide. In its heyday the “Shoe” employed more than 7,000 workers…The mid-19th century saw the beginnings of a wave of immigrants coming to Beverly to work on the grand estates as stone masons, landscapers, and gardeners. As the shoe industry became more established, they also went to work in the shoe factories and later for the USMC.[1]

The 2nd is invisible: Shining an ultraviolent light onto the piece reveals details from the Elliot Chambers rooming house fire of 1984, in which 15 residents lost their life tragically. The rooming house was situated on the northwest corner of Rantoul and Elliot, just a stones throw from where the photograph was taken thirty years later.