Questionable Value I admired the illustrations in this crumbling 3000 page turn-of-the-century dictionary, so I cut out every single illustration to save. Small detailed illustrations have always excited me, from my earliest memories of book reading. Despite being out of date, with much of its information incorrect or obsolete, I couldn’t bear the idea of all these detailed little illustrations in this dictionary being discarded. To me, they represent someone’s time and labor, and therefore have value, even if that value has no place in our current culture. Cutting out circles came naturally as a way to frame and center each image. Circles with images suggested the idea of coins, and so I painted the space surrounding each image gold to illuminate that connection. On the back of each “coin” I tried to find vague but semi-sinister intent in the happenstance collection of words in proximity to each other, stringing together suggestive phrases that felt like a surreptitious undercurrent in a collection of knowledge that purports to represent truth and neutrality. I have admired the artist El Anatsui for many years, and wanted to try using his technique of wired together bits of material to create draping textile-like forms. The circular forms and suggestion of wealth and armor reminded me of the feather capes that Hawaiian kings once wore, Ahu Ula. Creating a “protective” yet flimsy cloak suggesting past wealth in the midst of the pandemic seemed like an appropriate symbol for the omnipresent anxiety of 2020, a regal garment of questionable value.
front detail
back detail
In Defense of Extraction This cuirass is made up of, and covered with, images of ore from a 1960’s children’s book of minerals from around the world. I extracted the minerals from the book just as they might be extracted from the earth, thereby rendering the book useless, and heightened the “value” of each specimen by investing additional labor in by giving each one dimension. The idea that mineral wealth might protect us is undermined by the inherent fragility of this object; there is no such thing as protection from the human habit of extraction.
detail
Caput Caput means head, but sounds the same as kaput, meaning something is finished in a terminal sense. This helmet pretends that you can divide up, conquer, and possess the world and its resources; the wearer becomes the center of that world. The coins, mainly from colonizing countries, hover around the globe-like head piece to create a sort of protective barrier. The currency, made of repurposed maps, represents individual countries and the wealth they have accrued by claiming ownership. The coins reach out into space, the actual boundary for our species, the next place to colonize. While this piece was made before the Titan submersible event, it reinforces the false equation of money = protection.
Inherited Pelt This fragile hide-like form is composed of repurposed envelopes, the windows reminiscent of microscope specimens. Each window holds a species from a period in evolution using images from an explanatory chart in a Golden Books Children’s Encyclopedia. The entire history of life on earth is bound together as a continuous process, just as the red wire runs like veins through the entire piece, all connected and ultimately introducing “Modern Man” at the bottom of the piece. This, then, is the legacy that we each inherit, built upon millions of years and cells, and makes me wonder what might eventually descend from us.
detail
"Recent Man" detail
Protection from Self Reflection This vestment, made of historic coin images, features heads of state and symbols of power. Money can be a protective strategy, a way to fend off threats from the world at large. But it also can cloud introspection, conflating self worth with external value. Therefore the reverse side of this garment is mirrored, revealing a distorted reflection to the viewer as a parallel for the false identity of wealth
Reflective reverse side
Icarus In the Greek myth of Icarus, hubris leads to catastrophic loss. This cause and effect formula underlies many of these works. In “Icarus”, hundreds of butterfly species, excerpted from a world encyclopedia of lepidoptera, have been collected like beautiful specimens and harnessed to each other in pursuit of an arrogant goal. The very act of traditional butterfly collecting negates their ability to fly; here, the delicate violence of stapling all these creatures' wings together denies the functionality of the result. Possession becomes Midas’ touch: what is extracted in excess from the natural world begets our downfall.
underside
detail of top
Parental Poncho “Parental Poncho” is composed of both of my parents’ CAT scans. Obviously non-functional as protection, it is made up of images that are the most intimate and most anonymous visual representations possible - I am looking at the inside of my parents’ brains, yet who they were is nowhere to be found. And while this garment can surround me with my parents, I am exposed nevertheless. When I think of all the ways my parents tried to keep me safe, I become aware of the ways they could not protect me as well, just as I cannot protect my children from much of the world.
detail
LandsCape This rigid formal cloak, made up of discarded metal disks linked together, is reminiscent of chain mail. The disks along the bottom edge feature dozens of wildflower photographs, but give way to pans of parched cracked earth at the top edge, suggesting drought and the disappearance of botanical bounty. The underside is lined with technical illustrations portraying taxonomic variations of the plant species, and in combination with the severity of the metal construction, presents a clinical version of the visceral exterior.
Earth and flower details
interior
Lady Luck A fortune teller’s turban, or a bandaged head - both allude to the role of luck, and the desire we have to control it. The scarf-like train of the bandage gradually reaches the ground, hosting a wandering trail of formal and informal arrangements made up of cards, lucky “hands” in Bridge, each hand lined with lucky stars/constellations. They are supported by delicate gauze, a material that suggests both wounds and survival after bad luck. Luck feels like the most important and most indeterminate force in our lives. In the face of that, cards and constellations seem like attempts to quantify, or capture luck, and to ward off our ultimate lack of control.
detail, head bandage
detail, bridge hands lined with constellations/lucky stars
detail train
Hunter Gatherer This flak jacket seems to be a home for birds, made of stuffed paper pouches lined with all the fibers a bird might use to build a nest. Each bird pierces through a pouch, both guarding and hiding; the multitude of beaks create a thorny aggressive exterior. All of these elements result in a conundrum over who is predator and who is prey.
detail, interior and exterior
back
Border Patrol This rancher’s hat is composed of images of barbed wire back to back with images of raw meat. This can reference both fenced in livestock and/or the cruelty of our immigration policy. In either case, the hat denies the wearer protection.
Exterior detail
Interior detail
Hanging by a Thread The shape of the United States forms a curious silhouette we all immediately recognize. It has always looked to me like a small-headed big-bellied beast precariously balanced on tiptoes, which also seems to describe our national character, even more so during the 2024 election. I had a collection of small maps of the US, culled from reference books, and as I added to this growing pile of cut outs, they began to look like vulnerable little life forms needing care. That association, paired with the traditional pastel coloring of maps, led me to thinking about baby blankets, like the entire country was made up of hurt that needed swaddling. At the same time, the variety of information these maps contained, from distribution of religious affiliation, to GDP per state, to changes in weather patterns due to climate change, reminded me of how fragmented this country is, as echoed by our state of disunion during the election. And then there is the terrain itself, so endlessly fascinating in its vastness and variety, unified by its own contiguous land mass. With the land as container for all these differences, I set about joining the pieces together like a crazy quilt, a desperate attempt to corral all the parts into a whole. Making this felt like performing a symbolic act of caring for the fragile connections that still remain between us, barely holding together in the face of a hostile takeover.
Backwards/Frontwards
detail