Jenny Hurth - Pandemic Flotsam

Jenny Hurth was born in San Francisco, grew up there and in Berkeley. She has lived and worked in Oakland for the last 30 years.

Jenny has worked as a seamstress most of her adult life and started making quilts when her kids were growing up. When she became interested in discarded and salvaged materials, she started making quilts, bags and other miscellany out of all kinds of reclaimed materials, such as vinyl advertising banners, overstock clothing and found fabrics.

During the Covid lockdown Jenny started photographing the masks, gloves, and disinfectant wipes she was seeing in the streets on her daily walks. Soon enough, she started picking them up and collecting them. She thought it would be interesting to make “quilts” out of them, they were so filthy and disgusting. She liked the contradiction of making traditional comfort items out of these symbols of what was, at that time, a scary and deadly disease. 

We have all experienced the Covid-19 pandemic, all of humanity has gone through this!  

These “quilts” are her sewn impression of the experience.