Baylee Schmitt: “we settle into corners with the dust and mites”
On view at LaiSun Keane through February 16, 2025
The past and present were woven together once again as I walked into LaiSun Keane and was transported to a crocheted recreation of artist Baylee Schmitt’s childhood bedroom. The exhibition, “we settle into corners with the dust and mites,” explores Schmitt’s complex relationship with her twin sister through depicting the bedroom the two once shared, crocheted from Schmitt’s memory. I felt I was intruding on an intimate space in the small gallery, as I walked between childhood beds, dressers, windows, doors, and wicker drawers—all of which hung suspended from the ceiling.
Schmitt gives a tangible form to the slippery abstract nature of memory in an exhibition that is both literally and figuratively suspended in space and time. The yarn acts as the threads of memory, coming together to form a version of the past that is made up of memories passed from Schmitt’s brain to her hands to the artwork.
Portraits of the twins’ faces can be seen staring from the doors and the dressers, though the scale is not the same, causing the faces to stand out and the proportions to appear slightly distorted. Inherently, the furniture and artifacts of childhood (from stuffed animals to a Twilight poster) are flat pieces and are not able to replace the real items. These distortions are not unlike the distorted nature of memory over time.
The crocheted pieces also do not convey a sense of permanence or solidity—and, in fact, they are not entirely solid. The small holes between stitches create a slightly see-through effect, and the pieces are covered in hanging strings of yarn, making them seem as if they are dripping or melting—or perhaps that if you were to pull on one, it would all unravel. The work feels fragile, in the beautiful and intimate way that memory is fragile and imperfect.
Once again, I am left considering the idea that multiple conflicting realities can be true. Two sisters can be similar in what they have shared in childhood, yet lead very different lives. Memory can be made tangible and real through art, yet this does not exclude it from being abstract and flawed. And even if we cannot always see them at the same time, multiple worlds can exist within one.
- by Melanie Litwin
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