Mookie Margolis

I am a queer artist and teacher from San Francisco. My work ruminates on children raised in domestic trauma. I examine family systems that house narratives of authority, dependency, isolation, and the degradation of authenticity.

Growing up in San Francisco and teaching at my family’s nonprofit art studio, I externalize childhood dependence on authority figures by molding hard feelings into malleable, safe spaces. My crocheted, hand-spun, plied, and dyed fiber work embodies spiraling forms that simulate a journey—mending the mental through the material. During the Covid-19 lockdown, I created vessels for my community: bold, fearless balaclavas. Crochet becomes a protective shell, a defense built against emotional injury. Hats make people feel held, much like a house sustains. I am influenced by the deteriorating architecture of San Francisco’s historic Richmond District, where walking my dogs offers solace from the interior.

Currently, I am welding steel armatures for a collection of pet carriers—portable homes with painted, hand-woven, and knit facades that both reveal and conceal family dynamics. These containers house sausage links that are stuffed with weaving waste, condensing the squelched potential and exploitation of vulnerable individuals into a simple, attractive package. This is the form conservative society wants to grab onto, cling to, and ultimately, submit to—an attempt to envision society as a corporate office fortress stripped of sustainability, creativity, and reverence for one another. My work serves as a warning sign, seeking an ironic quick fix for Uncle Sam to stop harming future generations, carrying the abstract urgency of imposed, swallowed, and disturbing sausages.

*Photo taken by Nicky S. Garcia