Backpack | Dawn Stetzel

(photo credit Ronald L Jones)

Backpack is now in a permanent collection in Seattle, WA
purchased by The City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, 2020

Title: Backpack
Place/Time: Dawn wearing Backpack in Houston, Texas on March 24, 2013 as part of Art League Houston‘s “Connections and Directions” exhibition March 21-April 26, 2013

Size: 44″ tall x 29″ wide x 20″ deep
Materials: paperboard from printmaking studio recycle bin, fabric, metal, housepaint, walnut ink

Details (condensed):
In realizing my need for a sense of community, I wonder if I can build a community wherever I go. Backpack is my exploration of this question. Backpack, is a tangible cluster of houses, and also a metaphor for the invisible support system that I hope to be able to take with me anywhere. As an individual I strive for the ability to build a community, to take support from it, and to give back to it, wherever and whenever I need it. Within Backpack is also the responsibility I feel to carry and care for my community. The skill of community-building, anyplace and anywhere, provides comfort to me as I live in what I feel to be a teetering structure of existence.

Details (expanded):
What is the correct way of living in a place? What factors are involved in determining acceptable and outside of acceptable ways of living in a place? How do the differing views form a human community or separate human communities? In trying to engineer a lifestyle I struggle through feelings of isolation and vulnerability in my search for a way of living that honors stewardship and puts me within a network of community support.

I use the house as an object and metaphor within my work. I explore attraction and sensitivity to place, notions of home, sense of community, and perceptions of safety and security. The houses that most appeal to me are held together structurally, but just barely. These houses are precariously perched, tenuous, shack-like, up on stilts, patched and repaired, structures with shared walls showing a reliance on, or response to others as well as a resourcefulness that comes out of necessity.