Saturday, July 4, 2009

Taking it Apart - What my process teaches me

The more art I make, the more my process teaches me about my work. 

My last two posts have focused on using a beautiful piece of antique, Irish lace for my "post-it note" pieces—my textual pieces on scraps of fabric. As I chose discrete sections of this lace for each textual excerpt, I began to realize that my post-it-note pieces are powerful partly because they are on rough-edged fabric scraps. They are small, a little raw, and therefore intimate. Sometimes I hem the edges of these pieces, and often I don't. The rough edges seem consistent with the experiences I describe.

So I decided to extract each textual snippet from the antique lace. As I cut, I feel as if I am betraying the fabric, yet I am setting my work apart.

Piece at left:
"My relationships are nutritionally deprived. It started with my recession boyfriend." 2009. Embroidery on snippet of antique lace.

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