“This is a computer. It’s a wooden computer made of wood and metal.” I’m at the cozy home studio of artist Anders Zanichkowsky, who is explaining the complicated basics of their canopy-bed-sized, 24-harness AVL mechanical dobby production loom, on which they weave gorgeous, luxurious blankets by hand—most of which are intended for burial.
Zanichkowsky launched Burial Blankets, as his business is known, in the fall of 2021. It was the perfect melding of several longtime interests. “I was always a death kid,” he said. “I wrote a will when I was a teenager. And I’ve also always been very, very drawn to really deep craft study and technique.”
Burial Blankets
burialblankets.net
instagram.com/burialblankets
“Guardian Threads”
Through 5/17: Mon–Tue, Thu–Fri 10 AM–4 PM, by appointment, art@epiphanychi.com, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland, epiphanychi.com/helen-geglio-anders-zanichkowskyguardian-threads
In high school, Zanichkowsky immersed themself in ceramics, specifically wheel-throwing, taking classes each semester and working on projects before and after school, and even on the weekends. As an undergrad, at Hampshire College, they focused on printmaking, another hands-on, labor-intensive medium.
Credit: Gurtie Hansell
Nearly a decade later, Zanichkowsky began an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, again intending to concentrate on printmaking. “I was making all of these very beautiful things to hang on your wall,” Zanichkowsky said. He was also getting into performance and video, but he wanted to make art with more practical, real-world applications. “I was really hungry for art that would have a real life in the world,” they said. “I don’t know that I could have articulated this at the time, but I can certainly say now, burial blankets—they’re not about death. They’re not about the sacred. They are the sacred. They are sacred objects. They’re for death itself.” That realization, along with a few unexpected events, changed his course of study and, by extension, his life.
“The very first semester, the first week of that semester, I found out that my first love, my teenage boyfriend, had died,” Zanichkowsky said. “That really cracked me open in a way I was not expecting.”
Also around that time, Zanichkowsky happened upon the British Museum’s collection of ancient Egyptian death and afterlife artifacts. “I was, like, awestruck and horrified at the same time because of the funeral art and the burial art that was stolen and put on display,” they said. Being in the presence of such powerful artwork felt wrong on every level—spiritually, artistically, and politically. But the pieces were still incredibly moving. “It was this mixed feeling of, yes, this is really wrong, and also this is the best art I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m inspired by it.”
In thinking about how to take that inspiration in an ethical direction, Zanichkowsky landed on textiles. “I felt very strongly that I needed to find my own way of making contemporary burial art that would be meaningful and important to the people I know right now,” he said. “Every culture on earth has its textiles tradition. So you can find your way back to your own cultural heritage through weaving.”
Zanichkowsky took a weaving class with professor Marianne Fairbanks. One of his first big projects was making a cloth for his late boyfriend, which was used in a performance piece called for G.
That piece was made in 2018, but it wasn’t until the end of 2020 that the full idea for Burial Blankets took hold. The artist’s work as a weaver, desire to honor death, and long-held interest in green burial (an earlier idea was to open a green funeral home) coalesced one day while they were weaving. Within months, Zanichkowsky bought a loom; they spent the summer of 2021 prototyping blankets, doing time trials of the process, and developing a business plan. Burial Blankets launched that fall.
Credit: Anders Zanichkowsky
Burial blankets can be used in any kind of funeral service. They’re made solely from natural fibers chosen by the client so they can be used in a green, or natural, burial, which involves no embalming fluid or vault, allowing the body to decompose into the earth. It’s much more environmentally sound than embalming or cremation. (Regulations on green burial vary by region; you can find green burial providers at greenburialcouncil.org.) But the blankets don’t need to be used in a green burial—they could also be draped over a casket or used following other religious or cultural traditions.
Crucially, the blankets are typically commissioned for a client during life; they are meant to be enjoyed while living, becoming a cherished part of one’s life, before being used as a burial object. Yet, Zanichkowsky does have a new partnership with Inclusive Funeral Care—located along the borders of Uptown, Andersonville, and Ravenswood—which will stock ready-made burial blankets. While commissioned blankets are meant to be deeply personal, the ready-made ones will be traditional and elegant. The ready-made he was working on when I visited his studio was composed of bleached white and cream tones, which will result in a tasteful, almost iridescent cloth.
The typical, full-size blanket is about 80 by 110 inches and typically takes the artist about 40 hours to make. The most time-consuming process is setting up the loom—measuring out the correct lengths of thread, loading them onto a rod, and threading each strand individually onto the loom, all while keeping the tension exactly right.
Credit: Anders Zanichkowsky
Each commission starts with a consultation—free of charge. Otherwise, the artist uses a sliding scale, encouraging customers to pay what they can. The low end, $40 an hour, pays “a basic living wage in Chicago,” and the work is skillful and painstaking, resulting in an heirloom-quality product. The final price will run a few thousand dollars, which might seem like a lot unless you’ve ever had to pay for more traditional funeral services (or have read Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death).
If you’d like a firsthand look at Zanichkowsky’s handmade blankets, you’ll have the opportunity at “Guardian Threads,” an exhibition opening March 28 at Epiphany Center for the Arts, where visitors are encouraged to touch and engage with the cloth. “They can wrap themselves in it if they want to,” Zanichkowsky said.
Commissions for burial blankets are always open. “The process just starts with a conversation,” Zanichkowsky said. “I really emphasize that with people. Yes, we get to a point where I give you an estimate and you make installments and you come visit and see the looms and you weave part of your cloth. But . . . that whole part can feel a little abstract to people. The whole process of a custom commission really just begins with a relationship. And that moves at the pace of someone else’s relationship to their own mortality, really.”
