MFA Thesis Exhibition,
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, Main Gallery (2008)
These lightweight textiles are hung to form various configurations of multiple fabric planes, which are variously dyed, cut, pieced, and embellished. Each piece explores the physical potential of suspension and the possibilities of layering. Suspension from multiple points creates a fluid drape in the fabric that hints at its gravitational pull, but because the fabric is so lightweight, suspension also subjects the work to air currents. The use of transparent and limited hues within each piece, and the creation of negative spaces between and within layers, enhances the work’s fragility. The substance and physicality of fabric thus arranged conveys multiplicity, temporality and complexity. This work is meant to express the spaces between, or the spaces just before, or just after, things - spaces that we inhabit temporarily. Scaled to the space a body inhabits, this work engages the viewer both visually and viscerally, encouraging a haptic visual experience in which the viewer imagines, recognizes, or remembers the feeling of these textural elements.
Various processes contribute to the somatic history of the fabric and its multiple transformations; these pieces hold not only the results of the labor that made them, but the memory of that labor as well. As sensuous materials suspended in space, casting shadows on the walls and floors, they confront the viewer differently from different perspectives as they subtly oscillate in response to the atmosphere, becoming, ultimately, communicative memories, that are completed when the viewer receives them.
Although this work has fixed edges, it also functions in relationship to what is absent - between, around, or behind these edges. By creating line as well as openings, and by delineating positive and negative space, the edges frame information – or demarcate the lack of information - caught within, behind or beyond the edge. Composers of music also point to the “substance” of nothingness: when a silence is created between sounds, the silence has profound significance, partly because it resonates with the memory, or the shadow, of sound.
These textiles consider how the residue of the past - whether expressed through layers that are selectively visible and hidden, through colors that are carefully created or resisted, through embellishments that enhance formal elements, or through objects that are cast off from the process of making the textile - is intrinsic to any renewal. The gossamer layers of experience, depending upon our perceptual vantage point, are transient, creating a mutable, translucent skin that keeps quietly changing as we proceed forward in time.
