Installation/Residency Proposal
The Chambered Nautilus is a mollusk whose shell is a spiraling series of chambers which, as the mollusk outgrows each chamber, it builds a larger one. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his poem, "The Chambered Nautilus," had one concluding line, "Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul...". He captured an essential wisdom of American spirituality: that it doesn't necessarily depend on theology but may be based in nature, personal observation and vision, and the process of growth. This installation recreates the growth of a large scale Chambered Nautilus during the course of the show or residency. Nautilus is a woven structure made of cotton T-shirts, the ordinary chambers that we fit, fill and soon outgrow. As stand-ins for our individual selves they're sometimes used to express our better natures, an urge for spiritual transformation. The process of building the artwork becomes an enactment of spiritual growth - it builds a place of beauty which the soul grows to fill.
Proposal
To create a monumental spiral tent-like structure that grows to 40' high during the course of the show or residency. A steel spiral support structure is suspended from the ceiling that lengthens in sections to the desired height. Cotton T-shirts cut into strands, yet still all in one piece, are woven around the spiral to build the nautilus shape. T-shirts whose text or pictures express spiritual growth are collected for this piece. Visitors watch as I weave the shirts together and the Nautilus grows larger. They're invited to donate a T-shirt to the piece, one that expresses their idea of spiritual growth. Texts from the shirts are written on the walls.
Site
The installation is built on sight and reaches about 40 feet in height. The building of the piece is an essential part of the artwork. Viewers may participate at every stage. They may leave T-shirts at the sight to be woven in to the piece. They may write the text from the shirt on the wall. Viewers are eventually encompassed within the weaving. Lighting from above casts evocative shadows into the shell space as the piece grows. The finished Nautilus is a large tent-like space, filled with shadows from the weaving, where people can rest, linger and meditate.
Estimated building time: 3 months
Installation Proposal
Floods and the devastation left in their wake have become more common as weather patterns are altered by global warming. If this trend continues, what will we be left with, how will we be living? This installation creates a metaphorical space that holds in suspension the surface of a rising tide and allows viewers to live through it. The water level is a suspended layer of loosely woven cotton T-shirts, as though individuals have shed their skin or been stripped in the water's rising, and are now just sort of floating. As viewers walk through the installation they sense the water's rise as they sink, the situation that overtook the whole city of New Orleans and now threatens many coastal areas and whole island nations.
Cotton T-shirts, cut into strands with neck holes left open, are woven into a sheet that is suspended across the room, hanging from the walls and ceiling in waves at about a 4 foot level. The shirts were collected from communities that have recently experienced floods, especially New Orleans. Visitors walking through a path between the waterline experience both being under water and keeping their heads above it. A dense network of shadows fills the space below the weaving, the open neck holes make circles of light. Snippets of text can be read on the shirts, and the full texts are written on the walls.
The installation is site specific, the waterline fills the whole room except for a path that wanders from one entrance to the other. The weaving is supported with lines of filament attached to the ceiling at various points to create low waves. Viewers are encompassed by the floating layer of weaving. Texts from the shirts are written on the walls like calls for help. Lighting from above casts an evocative underworld of shadow onto the floor.
2011
7'lg x 8'ht x 6'd, suspended 2' above floor
Dreams of home and the realities of the foreclosure crisis collide in Dream House.
A small suspended house structure hangs 2 feet above the floor. Viewers walk through doorways at both ends. The woven structure is both porous and concealing, swaying gently as people walk through.
Video images beam down through the roof of the house, casting a web of shadows and images on the viewers inside and down on the floor. The video imagery is of house building, house losing, and evidence of fairy tales left behind. Intermixed are images that play with gravity, like falling or flying, and impeded motion, like walking through sand or over boulders.
C'ood: a democracy experiment
2010
Deconstructed cotton T-shirts, rebar and wood
24' w x 10' h, with a 12' w central opening
"C'ood: a democracy experiment" is an outdoor participatory project about searching for the common good. Our diverse nation doesn't share a common cultural background with a long history of what culture should be, like many other countries. But we do share the ideal of working for the common good. This experiment tests whether we can see the beauty in that ideal, the beauty of what that might look like and feel like to do.
Viewers enter a circular tunnel from five different points. The tunnel is woven from T-shirts collected from all around Michigan. The weaving creates a space that can be seen into yet is mysterious. Viewers can roam around the inside enclosed space or enter the central open space. By navigating into and out of this unknown space, by moving among other viewers, they become part of an experiment in how to find the common good. C'ood is a transformational space in which people can see themselves within our communal culture.
The texts from the shirts are recorded on the floor and become part of the piece. The five entrances to the tunnel are each woven with shirts of one color. As the weaving merges over the arches into the center, the colors intermix. The central opening is surrounded by multicolor weaving.
This is a participatory project which invited engagement at all levels. Many volunteers helped with large jobs or small: builders, T-shirt cutters, weavers, installation team. Viewers who walked through the finished piece participated in the democracy experiment. C'ood was first exhibited in 2010 at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI on Calder Plaza.
Escape/Return Escape/Regresso
12'l x 7.5'ht x 9'w
45 cotton T-shirts, wire fencing, wood, wire, 2009
Escape/Return Escape/Regresso is a representation of human entanglement in a global age. A tunnel made of T-shirts from Latin American countries, like cast off skins, shows the cross-national struggle of illegal immigration, from poor to rich countries, that is taking place now around the world. The viewer walks through to follow in the footsteps of those caught in the cycle of migration between Latin America and the United States and glimpse the claustrophobic experience of those who escape for their lives and families, in search of better livelihoods. This piece involves both the Latin American and Anglo communities in the expression of an epic migration of peoples.
Exhibited:
ArtPrize, 53 Commerce, Grand Rapids, MI, 2009
Home: Loving It, Losing It, Leaving It, Duderstadt Gallery, University of Michigan, Women's Caucus for Art and Feminist Art Project, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009.
Nest
2006-7
40 cotton T-shirts, wire, pipe, 8 ft. ht. x 6.5 ft diameter, hangs 2' above the floor
From a collection of T-shirts from the Women's Movement, Nest became an expression of how women in the 70's gave up old lives to invent a protective incubator to give birth to new selves. These selves could go beyond the patriarchial roles of motherhood and wife, to a human role of their own choosing and their own definition. Nest created a transformational space where viewers from a new generation could participate in the daring experiment that was what the Women's Movement was all about.
In the Beginning, Dallas Women's Museum, Women's Caucus for Art, Dallas, TX., 2008.
Shirts & Skins, solo show, Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor, MI, 2007.
Venus of Willendorf: Redefining the Goddess, Duderstadt Gallery, University of Michigan, Women's Caucus for Art and Feminist Art Project, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009.
Fates: An Installation
2009, 4 deconstructed T-shirts, wire, filament, scissors, 8'w x 2'd x 7'-6"ht
Fate takes an ambiguous meaning for contemporary Americans who strongly believe that they have some measure of determination over how their life will turn out. Women are often advised to "take their lives into their own hands." Yet, we are still written into a lifeline from birth to death and looking back on one's life, it can be argued that almost nothing happens by our own "free will." The three Fates in Greek mythology were envisioned as women who were weavers. The first one, Clotho, spun the thread of life together; the second, Lachesis, measured one's alloted length; the third, Atropos, cut the thread off at the end. This piece envisions contemporary fate and our passage through it. It re-imagines the female role as an elemental space where shape and time cross and pass through.
Installed at River Gallery, Chelsea, MI until August, 31 2010.
Cornered
2009-10
Ongoing series of various sizes, deconstructed cotton T-shirts, wire, filament pinned in a corner using the walls, ceiling and floor
This ongoing installation series explores individual isolation using cast off materials compressed into the left over space of corners. Each installation is unique, like a three dimensional drawing. Each piece is made from one T-shirt cut in the same pattern: one long strip from the end of one sleeve to the neck to the end of the other sleeve. Nothing from the shirt is cut off or left out so the surface area of the shirt tells it's own story. The piece is stapled into the floor, walls, and ceiling of the corner.
2002, series of 7, watercolor, oil stick, stencils, collage 44" x 22"
The horrific events of 9/11 and the chaos that followed led me to make these paintings. Each painting dealt with one aspect of the event, to help untangle the levels of shock and sadness of the incomprehensible act.
National 9/11 Memorial Museum Artists Registry, 2010.
Fabric of Fear: Art after 9/11, 555 Gallery, Detroit, MI, 2005.
Testament, solo show, Ann Arbor City Hall, Ann Arbor, MI, 2002.
http://www.national911memorial.org
Acts of Nature
2001, Water color on paper,
22" X 30" and 14" X 20"
Mapping the human genome has been a breakthrough of almost infinite promise. Human intervention in such basic building blocks of life also brings up ethical questions and apprehension of unintended consequences. This series of paintings called Acts of Nature attempts to make visible the ecstasy of scientific revelation, and tie together the human hand in the act of discovery with the consequences of those actions.
WSG Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009
University of Michigan Life Sciences Complex, Ann Arbor, MI, 2004.
