Crash Pad

2016

A “crash pad” is a padded foam mattress used as a safe landing place in various athletic activities. Euphemistically, it has come to refer to a place where one lives yet spends little time (basically only going there to sleep), a home away from home, and a squat known to be a safe place for illicit drug use.

Crash Pad is a large sculptural object which functions as a bed but is modeled after a single-pill blister pack. The object itself is a flat, 8 foot square fiberglass structure with a hemispherical concave cavity in the centre. Inside rests a circular pill-shaped white mattress, made to nestle perfectly in the pill-divot. The structure rests on the floor, balancing precariously on the “bump” in the middle, making for simultaneously an uneasy resting place and a self-rocking cradle. 

Pills provide welcome relief from our pains and ailments. We turn to them as friends in times of need – to share our good times, and to help take away the bad times. Often, once we’ve come to know our friends, rely on them, become comfortable with their constant presence, it’s hard to imagine life without them. Friends become our lovers, family, daily companions. 

Completing this bed is a handmade quilt featuring a hand-drawn toile de jouy pattern. Traditional toiles often depicted pastoral scenes, usually with human figures engaged in innocent pastimes but sometimes sexual and less innocent ones. My pattern references traditional toiles but with large figures of a variety of abilities in the process of taking their medications and going to bed. The toile of the cuvet and the accompanying wallpaper is printed in traditional blue on white, referencing both the historical fabric and the paper-covered foil packet of my favourite pill; the bed form is based on the shape of that favourite pill packet I used for years, and is reproduced att the scale of my own body curled into the fetal position.