KIRSTEN ERVIN

I make artwork to connect with myself and the world around me. This artwork entitled Three Hour Shower, is about my care of my mother as she deteriorated from Alzheimer's Disease. It is an embroidered tapestry made on weaver's cloth stretched over a wood frame. Here's the story.

It took three hours to get my mother showered and dressed. That's why we didn't do it very often. When she became sick with Alzheimer's, she stopped bathing and refused to change her clothes. I think she forgot how to. She would stink and her hair would become plastered to her forehead. I found that if I pretended I was filming an upbeat infomercial, selling bathing and dressing as new and fashionable concepts, this sometimes worked.

First, I would adopt a spirited mood and brightly describe how we were going shopping in this awesome new store called "Your Closet". I'd escort my mother arm in arm to her bedroom and open her closet doors with a big "Ta Da!". Then we'd sift through skirts and jackets and shirts and I'd encourage her to pick some, selling her on each garment's attributes. Finally, we would lay all of her clothes out on her bed, and pick undergarments and stockings and her signature black Reeboks. Then I'd turn the music on, Frank Sinatra, maybe, and I'd turn into a Day Spa staff, announcing how clean and beautiful my mother was going to be. I'd start turning on the shower to adjust the water's temperature, sing along with the music to get my mother in the mood - Even mime a kind of vampy striptease to encourage my mother to disrobe. The point was to get her laughing - and to not be terrified of being naked in hot water while this strange woman - me - soaped her up.

Kirsten Ervin is a Pittsburgh based artist who creates illustration-based fiber art, as well as drawing, painting and collage. Her work is both autobiographical and community-based, focusing on both personal stories and everyday people and places. Kirsten provides fiber art and other classes at Contemporary Craft and other Pittsburgh venues. Kirsten was an original founder of Handmade Arcade, the region's largest craft fair and was also a founder of Creative Citizen Studios, an arts organization supporting artists with disabilities. In 2020, Kirsten was an Art and Social Practice Resident at the Carrick Library through Project Art, a program connecting artists and youth in libraries. Through Project Art, Kirsten crafted an Images of Carrick Tapestry for the library. . As a Fine Foundation Artist in Residence at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh Kirsten created tapestries with museum visitors. A FutureMakers Fellow at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Kirsten launched Portraits on Penn, offering over 100 free portraits to local people along Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh. Kirsten also created the Passenger Portrait Project, an installation of 50 portraits and interviews of passengers at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Kirsten has created art for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Three Rivers Arts Festival, and exhibited her work in galleries throughout Pittsburgh. She coordinates the Women in the Arts Meet Up with the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and is a member of the Associated Artists of PIttsburgh, the Fiber Arts Guild of Pittsburgh and Group A.