"This is my ode to California: the bridges, the water, the Chicana artists who hold up half the sky (this is a reference to the mural in Chicano Park in San Diego)! When I’m setting up a weaving, often I begin by threading each yarn through a heddle (like the eye of a needle with maybe a ¼ in. opening). The heddle controls which yarn gets lifted so I can weave into it. In this piece, the heddles look more like the pylons and cables that hold up the bridges that crisscross the San Francisco Bay. But in the weaving hovering over this bridge and water-like installation, there is another set of heddles. Open at the bottom, this pair of heddles climbs up through the weaving with hooks reaching through the middle of the fabric, acting like a spine with fingers. Because when I weave, I weave through history, through the fingers and spines that hold me up and allow me to pick-out a different kind of pattern in the fabric. It is the women who hold up half the sky, who hold me up too. " - Kira Dominguez Hultgren