Soft Sculpture allows me to work figuratively with flexible materials such as cloth, feathers, fabrics, and bridging industrial and malleable sources. Below are cropped perspectives of larger works in progress, like detail shots of a mise en scène or a tableau of characters engaged in a pose. The juxtaposition of odd patterns and different textures in close proximity gain intimacy and friendship that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Sighting differences in togetherness increases the possibility for tolerance and co-existence of many surfaces colliding, wrapping and falling into one another. Cloth for me weaves a social language with the basic elements of art: it carries ‘human’ draped with color, line, shape, texture along a point of view. Cloth has a range- it can cloak us minimally or we can wear it boldly in loud maximalist excess. Like a second skin it’s appeal is transformative, it can shelter and expose, it can bend us out of shape or re-shape our identity and perspective. Because of its evocative power, I like to use it to bridge animal/natural motifs with human life as a way to thread both existences together so that neither disappears from the continuity of life.
Early Liberation is a piece installed at SculptureFest 2022 in Woodstock , Vt. This figure wears a garment design that references 1930’s and late 1800’s. The sleeves are first quarter 20th century into Art Deco and the bodice/corset/coat is from the Victorian era. Here I use ripstop nylon waterproof material that was adopted in the military to endure the onslaught of wear and tear in combat away from wools and less pragmatic textiles. The colors are in stark contrast to the natural surroundings. She stands next to trees trying to own the show and define her ‘stage’. She is a problem for me. Humans continue to see how important they are and in doing so separate themselves from the Natural world. This figure could not be more out of place and ridiculous. She mocks what humans continue to do in forging their independent identities into the world. There is a falseness, absurdity to this arrogant pride and sets us off into competitive modeling of one power over another. Now our Nature is almost human created, very little wild left. She is also out to have a little fun. She knows she is no match for the natural partner of trees next to her, whom she is desperately trying to impress.
CHASING THE LIGHT- curated by KELLY HOLT, on view until January 28, 2020 at Spruce Peak Arts, Stowe, VT
Tales from around the world have kept the SNOWY OWL in a distinctive place in our global culture. Now more than ever it’s legend is relevant. With its rising wildlife status as ‘vulnerable’ I feel the urgency to uncover its significance, to relate human and animal relationships, and to revolve around Kerouac’s point of ‘illumination out of the dark’. Researching from various sources has lead me to consider the SNOWY OWL not only as a valuable species of earthly beauty, but also symbolically as a shapeshifter archetype, which stories reveal. This messenger is a being with piercing vision for the unseeable whose actions try to survive our delicate balancing act on this earth.
I believe we all share ideal patterns of human nature, if we surrender for brief moments to our inner world. My inquiry has lead me to ask “What if you saw yourself standing between your physical form and that which is formless?
What if you became a lens that is not dependent on everything you readily know?
Perhaps then you would see your own lightness and darkness synchronizing as perfection. Perhaps we would see our ‘vulnerable’ selves implicated with all species who are unprotected. Perhaps we could recognize how we all need to endure the flight like white owl between moon and light.
From Kerouac’s masterful honesty we can learn to trust that moments of clarity might be cloaked in doubt however reveal a second later with surprise, like Owl’s catch of a buried lemming.
Psst...standing next to you here in draping white and black, you might have switched from unease and back to your normal. Fear not, I am your ally moving toward a greater good.
‘Draft of a New Harmony in a Slip Dress Pocket’ is a romantic proposal to engage with a philosophical perspective of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believed nature and humanity ultimately co-exist as one soul, one power, one whole.
In this display I share a view of the Greek mythological Three Graces also known as The Charities only they are re-imagined through Emerson’s transcendentalism. My ladies grace with animal hybrids. Figure and environment are inseparable as color and material unify together to suggest a state of belonging. My first Grace acts in protest against the general state of society, my second bears an expression of self-reliance and the third casts an outlook of nonconformity, an introspective turn toward instincts, ideas and other senses. These states of being are accessible and shine within each of us providing we perceive the power of the whole in our soul.
