taller than a trash can
in which I try to wax poetic about whether I'm making art or material or both?
I ran in to my friend, Jarmel, at a bar a few weeks ago and we fell in to chatting about the long leash theory. I had just fallen down a tiktok rabbit hole about it, so I was freshly buzzing, excited to learn more, and deeply interested in the art show Jarmel was curating with friends at the fairmount house. Their curatorial thesis pushed my understanding of the CIA’s efforts to underwrite American abstract expressionism to include questions about the tradition of craft- how pulling it into the cold, critical light of fine art and perhaps undermining the value of utilitarian artisan goods changed how we use, acquire, and ultimately value our every day objects. Our conversation about craft and its’ place in Art kept tumbling in my head for days after. It mirrored a throughline I’d been wrestling with in my process with my own work. As I’ve previously written about, I’ve spent the last few years treating my work like product, restricting its value in my mind to usefulness, social media hits, and dollars and I’ve begun asking myself what it might feel like to hold my process back from utility and just let it be seen.
I don’t know that these pieces are successful Works-of-Art as they stand, but that’s not ultimately the point. The part of the process I’ve been enamored with as of late and seeking to see more clearly is a brief moment- taking the overlooked materials at the bottom of my studio and reconfiguring them into a surface I find beautiful, sturdy, and ultimately useful again. These two pieces are a pause I rarely afford myself- a stepping back to see the blank slate I’ve made, without assumption about what it will become next.
I’ve spent the last year or so mulling over how to talk about the idea of “fiber sinks” (akin to carbon sinks, I guess?). The garment industry generates so much textile waste, even at the home-sewer level, and my work sits directly in conversation with that waste generated. As I’ve developed my own methods for working with this material, I’ve come to recognize and deeply appreciate its place the long and pervasive history of material re-use. It’s an essential practice for human survival, perhaps now more so than ever (as we value our every day objects less and replace them more and edge closer to the brink of material collapse), but can it also be witnessed as beautiful? Recontexutalized as art? I don’t believe there is an end point in material re-use, a gallery wall can be one stop over to the next point in the journey, maybe some pants will be next?