Pam Connolly reconstructs personal family history through vintage potholder loom weaving techniques and photographic manipulation

Hudson Valley-based artist Pam Connolly transforms personal family photographs into intricate woven artworks using vintage potholder looms in her series Columbus Drive. Growing up in 1960s suburban New Jersey, Connolly’s childhood was centered around her parents’ furniture store, where she wandered through showrooms filled with carefully arranged patterns and objects. These curated, aspirational displays planted the seeds for her fascination with make-believe environments and domestic spaces, themes that have permeated her lens-based practice spanning three decades.

The Columbus Drive series channels Connolly’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between fantasy and reality through the lens of home and family narratives. Her previous work has included photographs of tin dollhouses and family portraits that dissect the idealized American dream and childhood recollections. For this body of work, Connolly reproduces family snapshots on canvas, cuts them into quarter-inch strips, and meticulously weaves them with colored fiber on metal potholder looms — vintage tools that trace back to the early- to mid-20th century when sock manufacturers repurposed textile scraps and marketed them as kits, gaining immense popularity during the Depression era and throughout the midcentury period.

Through the process of cutting and reassembling these deeply personal images, Connolly unravels unspoken childhood details and retells her story from a fresh perspective. By creating patterns with colored thread and maneuvering the canvas strips under and over the loom framework, a new image and vision gradually emerges. This methodical reconstruction allows the artist to meditate on both the broader cultural landscape of the 1960s and the intimate contours of her own memories and family history.

The resulting woven pieces balance technical precision with emotional resonance, transforming familiar snapshots into textured explorations of memory and domestic life. Each work in the series carries titles that hint at personal moments — “First Day of School”, “Dad and Rembrandt”, “Lauren in My Room” — grounding the abstract process of deconstruction and reconstruction in specific familial experiences. Beyond this series, Connolly also operates the Landau Gallery, a 1:12-scale contemporary art space that further demonstrates her commitment to exploring the intersections of miniature worlds, curated environments, and the stories we tell about home.

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