ARTIST STATEMENT
My
work explores the twin impulses to ruin and repair by juxtaposing
rapid acts of destruction, such as staining and cutting, with
painstaking restorative labor. Embroideries are hand-stitched
over stains and rips. The marks are found on linens or are
created by cutting and spilling onto canvas. The work scrambles
expressions of aggression with masochistic patience and sublimation
and plays with the feminine and the sexual through the graphic
form of the "stain" and the adding of peek-a-boo, lace inlays
to repair cut holes that expose the hidden space behind the
canvas. Some are hung off wall to reveal the secret and unintended
marks of the verso.
Shredded paper sculptures, such as the Tax Files,
reconfigure a mass of paper that is grouped via written content,
into slabs reminiscent of tree cross-sections where the climate
of a given year, and the tree's overall age are visible in
a single slice. Historical information can be read in the
colors of deposit slips, pay stubs, receipts and tax forms.
The manila envelopes, in which the receipts have been stored
for the 7 years until shredding, are also included. The cellular
coils grow outward as they are glued together into flat rounds.
The re-use of paper, as well as the attempted "repair" of
the long-lost original tree, is an examination of feelings
of despair about waste and unsustainability. Simultaneously,
the exercise of translating numbers back into a comprehensible,
physical manifestation is an attempt to develop a tool for
managing overwhelmingly large tallies, such as those we encounter
regularly in reports on war or climate change.
Other sculptural works, such as [a cast of my left hand in
the shape of a] Glove, use thread to cast the form of
the artist's left hand through the efforts of the free hand.
The piece plays with the obstacle of sewing with, literally,
"one hand tied" and allows improvisational stitching and the
results of inconvenience to cast the body part, incorporating
into the struggle the additional inevitable masochism of using
a needle to delineate bare flesh.
Cut clothing pieces, such as Unmade (2006), also
play with the idea of transformation, as the carefully structured
cutting allows the clothing to grow into new forms, the dress
in this piece becoming vine-like, extending itself into a
longer shape as bits of it are taken away. The removed elements
of the pattern, which are flat reproductions of flowers, are
sewn and stuffed, puffing up into seductive 3D forms, which
mimic the "real" flowers they represent. They are randomly
grouped, which liberates them from the repetition of the original
pattern, even while they are pinned and static, separated
from the fluid state of fabric.
