Lily Martina Lee & Carrie Quinney

The Great Basin Murders is a collaborative series commemorating victims of unsolved homicides with handwoven burial shrouds and photography. To honor unidentified victims, I develop original patterns with weaving software using data about each victim including height, weight and age estimates, the date when the victim was found, and the GPS coordinates of where they were found. I incorporate additional details through traditional textile processes rendering tattoos in embroidery, appliquéing clothing remnants, and embellishing with found jewelry. While this work is an attempt to broach the anonymity of unidentified human remains through devotional craft, the resulting woven panels remain visually austere illustrating the absence of information that characterizes many cold cases. By weaving these shrouds, I seek to give each victim a gesture of respect not previously afforded to them. I collaborate with photographer Carrie Quinney who documents the handwoven shrouds at the site where each victim was found, stylistically bridging crime scene documentation and landscape photography. These images position the shrouds as bodies, contextualizing the series in art historical movements considering violence against women from Baroque paintings to contemporary site-specific works such as Suzanne Lacey’s Three Weeks in May, all against the backdrop of the foreboding, mysterious and desolate Western American landscape.

Artist Bio

Lily Martina Lee was born in Pullman, Washington, United States. She earned a BFA in Fibers and a BA in American Indian Studies from the University of Washington in 2009, and a MFA in Sculpture from the University of Oregon in 2012. Lee has exhibited her work in the Ukraine, Portugal, Hungary and Greece and in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States including Northwest Art Now at the Tacoma Art Museum and the Commuter Biennial in Miami, Florida. She lives and works in Boise, Idaho where she is an associate professor at Boise State University. She is a member of the Handweavers Guild of Boise Valley.

Carrie Quinney was born in Moscow, Idaho, United States. She earned a BFA in Visual Art, Photography Emphasis from Boise State University in 2002, and a MFA in Visual Art from Boise State University in 2018. A multimedia artist and photographer, Quinney has exhibited work regionally in the American Northwest and currently lives and works in Boise, Idaho. Quinney is currently an adjunct professor and multimedia coordinator at Boise State University