Bolt down, v. Eat a large amount of food quickly.
synonyms: garbage down, gobble up, shovel in.

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Bolt Down: our narrative of food insecurity is a temporary mural project based on food insecurity in Colorado. It works with statistics from the food insecurity issue highlighted by the updated 2021 Colorado Health Access Survey. The project introduces the inequality and injustice issues relating to our access to food.

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The artwork has one hundred bolts, and they represent the unit of each group. The colored bolts represent affected numbers out of 100 of the race/ethnicity for all reportable groups. The ten various-sized plates (some with a bolt, empty, or a cut out) represent the pre-existing condition of inequality. The bolt was cast from an actual sample on a bank vault. A tightly fastened bolt suggests a barrier to resources through a failed system. I use paper-skin (felted paper) in many earlier projects to often achieve a community quilt-like symbolism. In this project, I was pleased to evolve this meaning and create more effective dialogue at a large scale through community dining table-cloth-like texture alluding to a community fabric of Colorado. Please see the full detail PDF for additional information. 

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The 2021 survey and detail were provided by Lindsey Whittington, Policy Analyst at the Colorado Health Institute, and Julia Char Gilbert from Colorado Center on Law and Policy, aleading researcher of 2020's report, generously advised. This project was commissioned by Cecily Cullen, director, and curator of the Center for the Visual Art.