In 2022 I attended a residency at Lower Cavity, a former textile mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Half in Sunlight was originally developed in two parts: a site-specific installation of 30,000 feet of yellow twine tightly wrapped around the brick columns of the project space, as though they were warp threads in a loom, anchoring the parallel weft threads dimensionally in a 90-foot-long woven structure; and a series of cyanotype studies that reference “mill girls.”

The “mill girls” were a vast workforce of girls and young women (8,962 in Lowell, Massachusetts, alone) employed by the early textile mills in the US, and they performed skilled labor over deafening, dangerous machines. In 1834 and 1836, these girls protested their underpaid fourteen-hour workdays with well-organized “turn outs”—the first strikes of cotton-factory workers in the country.

The project’s title comes from “A Week in the Mill,” printed in 1845 in The Lowell Offering, a periodical written and produced by the girls. In describing the alternating drudgery and potential of a mill laborer’s life, the author notes, “It lies half in sunlight—half in shade.” My research on the textile mills and the girls’ labor is ongoing, and a new series of photographs and sculptures is underway.