Hens Rene, the latest from FiberGraf

Bustin' out...

In this piece, I decided to embellish the model by adding a French knot necklace. I also cut out the inside of the letters in "Hens," Jon's tag.

Victoria's Secret, tagged and draped

In December of last year, Jon, the other half of FiberGraf, gave me a Victoria's Secret catalog filled with tags on and around the models. I have been sitting with this catalog open on my main desk for the past few weeks, getting to know the images.

Initially, I was uncomfortable working with this imagery. I am a woman who is not fond of most magazines geared towards women. Personally, I don't like Victoria's Secret, mostly because I feel it offers a stereotypical or typical version of femininity, one that doesn't fit me (literally and figuratively). The more time I spent looking at the catalog, however, the more I began to see humor in the images. Jon explained that graffiti artists often tag magazines and printed advertisements. I now see the addition of his tags as somewhat parodic.

I have added my own kind of tag to the models by draping fabric over them in the shape of skimpy dresses or lingerie. In one case, the bottom image with red marker, I used fabric with a conventional men's woven pattern.

Like all of our collaborative work for FiberGraf, we have found here a way to combine our artistic languages on new substrates. I plan to create more of these pieces and to continue to explore the way in which the content and meaning of the images change as we add and delete information.