I have developed a wariness to this attitude. While I, too, am a human in desperate need of structure and routine, my interest in the matter does not lie in its potential for economic and social growth. I have spent many years carefully considering documentation and organization of information and life experience as central to my practice as an artist. My tendency to be critical here does not come from a dismissal of habit and routine, but rather a societal understanding of which habits are important and worthy of documentation. Textile making centrally revolves on the repetition of assembly of material, and therefore the ritual of working thread by thread, seam by seam becomes habitual for my hands. Elaine Showalter’s “Piecing and Writing” addresses this understanding by drawing a connection between the repetitive nature of quiltmaking, and its general dismissal as important by global powers (namely, men). Despite, as Showalter says, that textile making is “an economic necessity,” she also acknowledges that textile practices have been dismissed when compared in contrast to “high art.” Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that while there may be value in habit and its nature of repetition, not every habit is given that respect.
My work is an attempt to critique that thinking. I have always had a deep interest in textiles as archives of everyday experience, life, and interpersonal interaction. The clothing we wear, the sheets we sleep under, and the rug we dry our shoes on all keep a record of human existence. When it comes to making art, I find moments that are often overlooked, or seen as too ordinary to be remembered, to be the moments I hope to record. The stranger you bump shoulders with in the grocery store, the route taken to work every day, the person you don’t know, but recognize from the local park. History remembers growth and productivity, but does it remember what it really means to exist? A recent piece of mine, “Home for the Evening,” is a snapshot of a habit often overlooked. A woven jacket hangs off the back of a door frame, drawing attention to a nearly universally relatable experience.
This current body of work is taking these ideas of documentation, record keeping, and habit, and grounding them in physical spaces. I transpose the intimacy of human routine onto specific and familiar architectural locations. Through a process of breaking down the corners and nooks of a living room, or the geographic features of a neighborhood block, into color and geometry, I seek to encode lived experience. The spaces we inhabit (read: habitual) are not only central to the almost ritualistic nature of day to day life, but carry memory and information that is deserving of attention.
There is truly an obsession for me in the patterns we create for ourselves. Perhaps that is where my affinity for textile making comes from. My process takes shape as large-scale quilts and installation pieces that incorporate handwoven fabrics, screenprinted and dyed textiles, and notions collected along my journey as a maker. The process tends to be systematic, much like my observation of the world around me. By translating memories or experiences into colors, lines, and structures, I create a methodology, a rule book, to be followed. My personal “book” of habits does not seek out the next great thing, but rather recollects the parts of life that I think make us deeply, and fundamentally human.