A Patch Went on a Journey
Project Description: I make sculptural installations with wool, rubber, wood, and robots and implement an associative process to build four separate pieces that explore the concept of Agency.
Projects
1. The Three Fates
I created three oversized wooden female forms symbolizing The Three Fates: The Spinner who spins life thread, The Measurer who measures how long you live, and The Cutter who cuts the thread when you depart. Each fate hangs from the ceiling of a darkened room and casts shadows along the floor and walls. The fates drift about interacting with each other's eroticism and a tall phallus made of sheep wool. I make canvas dresses, apply gesso, and allow them to shrink, ultimately resembling animal skins. Phillip Glass's music plays in the background, and the room takes on a ritualistic feel of sacrificed animals, frenzied dancing, and primal erotic energy.
2. Monument to Mother
On a small wooden table with spindly copper legs, I installed a tall stack of multi-colored patches knit by my aging mother. On eye level, I insert a solid yellow wooden box with a window for an iPhone on which a split-screen video plays. The bottom screen shows deconstructing a patchwork blanket, and the top illustrates how I form a clay cast of one of the patches. I use the cast to reproduce hundreds of rubber patches. The rubbers are attached to the wall behind the video sculpture. The pattern of the patches represents the emotional patterns we grow up with.
3. The Table of Contents
I dress a large table (14') with grey wrinkled weed cloth, a readily available material from my local hardware store. I constructed a grid of 12 rows and four columns using goat wool. The grid is a metaphor for depicting dogmatic thinking. I arbitrarily situate seven woolen balls of various sizes and colors representing individual and fixed thoughts along the grid.
4. Matrixicals
I tie grapevines into five monumental three-dimensional sculptures resembling sci-fi insects with long protruding antennas and insert a knitted patch representing a vital organ. I collaborated with engineers to design and manufacture five robots on wheels that I attached to each sculpture. The now-moving insects have headlights and maneuver independently to avoid or create collisions with viewers walking among them, affecting their direction. These robotic sculptures make visible the arbitrariness of our human decision-making process.
Tieing these works together is a quote in red neon light from Jose Saramago's book, Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
If truth be told, her thoughts are not that clear, for thought, when all is said and done, as others and we ourselves have observed before, is like a great ball of thread coiled around itself, loose in places, taut in others, inside our head. It is impossible to know its full extent, one would have to unwind and then measure it, but however hard one tries or pretends to try, this cannot be done without assistance. One day, someone will come and tell us where to cut the cord that ties man to his navel and thought to its origin.
