To Be Held
2022
To read about my BFA Thesis, and see close ups of the work, visit this page ->
Here is some bonus writing from my final presentation, and photos of my work installed in the gallery for final reviews and our senior reception.
The installation included my baby blankets - a fleece blanket given to me by my great aunt, and two blankets crocheted by my great grandmother. It also included a bookshelf with books that have been important to my artistic and personal development, sketchbooks I made, and an art book I made from cloth my first year at college.
Fleece prayer shawls were provided, a nod to my time in Youth Group, and some of my guests kindly wore them even though it was close to 80 degrees that day and very hot under the lights.
Hung on the walls are the fabric I printed to create the sewn pockets - the patterns were developed from the same photos I used to etch the metal pieces. The jacquard weaving is also made from one of these files. The photograph is of me and one of my pieces, posing for baby photos. (Baby photos were taken by Emily Cobb.)
I am creating places that hold the memories of times when I felt warm and safe and wanted to make sure that I don’t forget that it’s possible. My pieces serve as a physical record that I believed these things.
They aren’t a perfect retelling of a memory, and they hold pain and confusion, but they hold warmth and beauty at the same time. These things can exist at the same time. It’s okay to have the good and the bad jumbled together. They’re both important to remember.
In the making of this series I am occupying a space where I can work through the memories that hurt and remind myself that they aren’t the whole story.
I am intentionally carving out a space and time in my life for myself to process and rediscover and evaluate painful memories without feeling overwhelmed or shutting down.
This work echoes my feeling of futility and frustration in my attempt to understand and preserve memories that are already lost to me. The work and the wearer become collaborators, carrying the weight of each memory together.
I place scraps and leftovers from the making process inside the lockets - keeping and saving the pieces that feel better to cut out or throw away in an effort to maintain a more complete and authentic understanding of the object's history.
Here is what has happened. Here is what was taken away, or reincorporated. It’s a more full picture of the truth, the reality. And still, imperfect.
I am forced to contemplate moments where I cut into these objects and forced them to change and bend and become something new, something Mine - and moments where I let them be, let them keep their colors and their textures and their shapes.
Moments where we worked together. I give them a safe, warm place to stay and hope I can be forgiven for trying so hard to make them something other than what they were.
I am forced to confront the urge to sand and file away every mark that remains as a result of the processes undergone by these objects.
It’s a wish for exoneration, for the ability to hide my actions. I choose to let the cuts and scrapes stay, because they're an important part of how the pieces came to exist.
This is what went into something - some pieces are lost, some pieces are misshapen, some pieces have been added. How much of something can be changed before that object is no longer the same?
I am struggling to remember my own reality and feel confident in my own perspective. I have been asked to justify and scientifically validate my beliefs, desires, and decisions, and I am attempting to distance myself from that impulse and fear of being seen as wrong.
In this series I am creating a process through which I reflect on and dissect memories. The objects that result are an amalgamation of pieces from different events, moments, relationships, and experiences.
This space is uncomfortable. We want to understand. We want things to be easy and clear and simple. I force my audience to recognize the pain of being unable to connect with something the way you want to, and reconciling the pain of being unable to truly understand my own life with the ability to create a story that I can be happier with.
The viewer should feel a sense of longing to understand, an almost, a not quite, an urge to connect the pieces and figure out how the story fits together. The viewer is forced to acknowledge the futility of these desires and to accept that it is impossible for them to ever fully understand.
As a queer person, I have been thinking a lot about the contribution of a body to society when that body is unable or unwilling to reproduce. Especially in religious and rural communities, a lot of weight is put onto producing and raising children.
I am forced to come to terms with a new understanding of the value of my time and energy when the end goal is not the continuation of my familial line.
I am forced to find my own meaning and new ways to contribute to whatever communities I may be part of, outside of giving birth.
The objects take shape in accordance to what I'm feeling and feeling like I need from them at the time. My thoughts mold around them, creating and working through ideas of attachment, nurturing, care, and worth. These pieces exist in proxy for any potential children I may have had in another life, becoming symbols of the impression I may leave on the world through my work.
I pour energy and devotion into them. I become a little too invested, worrying if they can breathe alright in their boxes, or if they feel cramped shut in a drawer. Am I protecting them or hiding them? I think about motherhood, how I was taught from a young age that it's the job of bodies like mine to care for others.
The objects I create and the conversations that exist around them become important to me as a stand-in for children. I am putting intention and thought into creation, with a commitment to finding ways for those objects to exist in my communities in a meaningful way.
The connections that can be formed around thinking together about the meaning of our material culture become a tool for continued community. They become an opportunity for serious reflection about the ways that we interact with each other and ourselves, and a space to create new, healthier, and more meaningful ways of existing.
