JACINTA BUNNELL

LATCHKEY LATCH HOOK TOWNSHIP

FEB 18 - APRIL 8, 2023

“My childhood was marked by shenanigans, tomfoolery, and a generous helping of hokey-pokey.”

— Jonathan Goldstein

In the beginning of 2020, the bottom dropped out of Jacinta’s work and she found herself on a pandemic-induced artist retreat. She suddenly had a wealth of time to focus on art, a luxury not previously known. She has tended to reach for crafts during times of solitariness, something, as a latch key kid, Jacinta had ample amounts of.

Latch hook rugs have always been a democratized form of art, made accessible from small town five and dime stores in the form of kits with easy-to-follow instructions. Latch hooking as a latchkey kid gave her something tangible and evolving to do, perhaps “latching” her to others who were doing the same in different times and eras. As a child who did not yet know she was an artist, creating latch hook rugs was one of the closest things to an artistic practice Jacinta had.

From 2020-2023, Jacinta sewed together a small number of latch hook rugs she had been collecting for years. She amassed more rugs as gifts from friends, purchased rugs from yard sales, and asked for rugs for her birthday. She then started created new rugs — first from vintage instructions — and then from her own designs. For three years, Jacinta latch hooked and sewed until she had before her several immense patchwork rugs made from other rugs.

Jacinta’s work is made from objects dethroned to a low shelf at a weekend church rummage sale. She make things out of other things and they stick around another moment because they have been reanimated by my nostalgia. LATCHKEY LATCH HOOK TOWNSHIP knits together a collage of yarn containing within it the essence of both strangers and friends, their meditative crafting energy funneled into what is now a singular focal point, a unified whole, a less lonely day.

The latch hook rugs she made herself symbolize long days of restoration and recovery from a chronic illness during which time I could do nothing else but make small, humble movements with my hands, two inch pieces of yarn one by one joining together to form recognizable patterns before tired eyes and beneath an even-more-tired body. Jacinta was finding that she had become another variety of latchkey kid once again, as solitary hours stretched into months, and months made up a year of being sealed up in her house, seeking cures for a mystery illness without yet a name. Whenever she felt tired, sick or ready to give up, she reached for her wood-handled hook, selecting the colors for the day that would bring me some tranquility, focus, and a reason to get out of bed. The assemblage of these daily endeavors turned out to be massive when all gathered into one form.

Latchkey kids are some of the most innovative and resourceful people we know. Because of what one learns to do — first tentatively and sloppily, and then with great efficiency — when you are your own custodian, you become a special kind of magisterial wizard of adaptation and inventive solution-finding. Jacinta is keenly aware that she have surrounded myself with grown latchkey kids. Magnetically drawn to one another, they are that scene in the apocalypse movie when all the remaining survivors slowly find one another after disaster — one by one, across time, parental deaths, scavenged sleeves of Saltines, lightning storms, and heart attacks. Her hope is that she has built a sanctuary where all the latchkey kids can gather and start some mischief together, tucked safely under the canopy of devotion-drenched yarn, a place to safely ride out the storm in unison. The painted keys on handmade lanyards are for us to let ourselves in.

When Jacinta was a latchkey kid, her mom had but two rules: