The Great Basin Murders

The work of Lily Lee, an associate professor of sculpture in the Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies, is featured in the solo exhibition, The Great Basin Murders, currently on display in the Nightingale Gallery at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Oregon through Dec. 6.

Curator Scott Gleeson wrote: “This series commemorates unidentified female murder victims found along roadsides from 1983-1997 in the Great Basin region of the American West. Taking the form of burial shrouds, these computer-designed, handmade weavings encode extant data about each Jane Doe in the structure of the cloth, referencing the victims’ height, skin color, adornments, clothing and manner of death. Each shroud is also represented by a photograph showing it installed in the landscape at the sight the corpse was discovered. Brief didactic texts relate basic facts of the discovery in the same sterile tone characteristic of the crime databases from which the artist mines content. About this project the artist writes, ‘The labor and materiality of the hand weaving draw on the history of feminist activism embedded in the craft to highlight the story of each victim, bringing attention to the persistent issues of violence against women.'”