ART THAT HEALS
My art explores my interest in treating the body as an entity that needs protection. Because of my Christian upbringing and ideology, I inadvertently place religious undertones on most of my work. I believe our bodies are sacred vessels that transcend physicality, sacred but fragile vessels that need protection, healing, and repair due to misuse.
My work is informed by both my technical training and biography. My technical training directs my interpretation of the body and the process of creating in my practice. I have an extensive background in working with the body through fashion design and garment construction. In working with fabric and materials that touch and cover the body, I gained an appreciation for the extent of the body’s vulnerability, resulting in the use of textiles as a natural medium of execution in my practice. My work involves a materiality that explores a range of textiles that is not limited to fabric. I incorporate textiles in my work through a haptic process of interaction, as a reflection of the body and the embodiment and transfer of trauma.
My earlier work consists of garments that I call wearables: sculptural pieces made from cording that can be worn or stand alone and represent the absent body (Image: Grief 1 and 2). These garments function as protective armature, both in literally and metaphorically. The concept of protection is imbued in all of my work, but the question is why? Why do I want to protect the body? And why does a body need protection? At first, I was unable to answer these questions. I did not understand, nor could I explain my need to manifest the protection of the body through my work.
Eventually, I discovered that my need to protect the body stemmed from personal traumatic memories. Acknowledging the history and continued presence of the wounds created by these traumatic memories helped me to further develop my concept of vulnerability and protection to include the process of repair. My artwork and writing includes anecdotes, fragments of my own memories, that explore the effects of trauma as memories embodied in cloth, as a representation of the vulnerable body, and builds on the concept of textile memory through the writings of Pennnina Barnett.
