Often I find myself engaging in impractical craft. I’m interested in domestic and artistic labor, how both are frequently unnoticed, unpaid, and unacknowledged. My art practice is invested in slow processes and imperfect craftsmanship. I’m intrigued by invisible labor performed and applied to inanimate objects. Household chores, commonly attributed to women’s work and the tools behind such, cloth in particular, are a source of inspiration. With my hands, I create works that explore impractical function. They hint at homeliness, are silly, awkward, yet sincere, recognizing their own inability to cook, to clean, etc.[1] In highlighting their broken qualities, I underscore certain virtues that are commonly overlooked in the everyday process of living.
I’m drawn to the meaning in an object that cannot be found in the thing itself but rather through its daily application. Within our homes, we maintain intimate relationships with our everyday belongings. These relationships give otherwise lifeless objects a sense of human dignity. [2] But this meaning, this intimacy, is unseen and devalued in the marketplace. Textile goods are currently being mass-produced, hyped momentarily, only to be soon cast off. [3] Often these objects move from our hands and hearts into dusty corners and eventually brimming dumpsters. By emphasizing unseen love and labor whose worth cannot be enumerated, I resist with my gentle stitches the fast-paced commodification of modern life.
Rather than falling prey to consumerist trends, I ask the viewer to consider the single (rather than the many) and its seemingly insignificant status (as opposed to a glorified it-objecthood). In the solitary single, there’s an unsaid story and whist weariness that interests me. As a child, I was in love with the way my baby blanket felt, especially the batting that fell through the threadbare corners. Soft materials evoke a safety and comfort that is often misunderstood as weakness. I prefer to use techniques that are traditionally seen as women’s craft to make defunct objects because I’m interested in what makes a woman’s work craft and a man’s art. By losing the functionality of craft, I hope to cause the viewer to take notice, to laugh, to be puzzled, to determine for him or herself the purpose of broken craftsmanship. In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes, “What a joy [it] is, when we recognize the importance of these insignificant things (71),” and ultimately, I’d like to achieve the same joy in my viewer, to cause him or her to recognize the importance of insignificance.
[1] I’m thinking about the cultural definition and concept of housewife or mother and how I can encounter that as an artist.
[2] This thought was inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space: “The housewife awakens furniture that was asleep” (68).
[3] I mention textile goods because they often hold an especially tender place in our hearts and homes. We snuggle with blankets, find comfort in wearing our favorite pair of blue jeans.
I’m drawn to the meaning in an object that cannot be found in the thing itself but rather through its daily application. Within our homes, we maintain intimate relationships with our everyday belongings. These relationships give otherwise lifeless objects a sense of human dignity. [2] But this meaning, this intimacy, is unseen and devalued in the marketplace. Textile goods are currently being mass-produced, hyped momentarily, only to be soon cast off. [3] Often these objects move from our hands and hearts into dusty corners and eventually brimming dumpsters. By emphasizing unseen love and labor whose worth cannot be enumerated, I resist with my gentle stitches the fast-paced commodification of modern life.
Rather than falling prey to consumerist trends, I ask the viewer to consider the single (rather than the many) and its seemingly insignificant status (as opposed to a glorified it-objecthood). In the solitary single, there’s an unsaid story and whist weariness that interests me. As a child, I was in love with the way my baby blanket felt, especially the batting that fell through the threadbare corners. Soft materials evoke a safety and comfort that is often misunderstood as weakness. I prefer to use techniques that are traditionally seen as women’s craft to make defunct objects because I’m interested in what makes a woman’s work craft and a man’s art. By losing the functionality of craft, I hope to cause the viewer to take notice, to laugh, to be puzzled, to determine for him or herself the purpose of broken craftsmanship. In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes, “What a joy [it] is, when we recognize the importance of these insignificant things (71),” and ultimately, I’d like to achieve the same joy in my viewer, to cause him or her to recognize the importance of insignificance.
[1] I’m thinking about the cultural definition and concept of housewife or mother and how I can encounter that as an artist.
[2] This thought was inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space: “The housewife awakens furniture that was asleep” (68).
[3] I mention textile goods because they often hold an especially tender place in our hearts and homes. We snuggle with blankets, find comfort in wearing our favorite pair of blue jeans.