Artist Statement
In my art, I explore the themes of obsession as a form of self placation. I create autobiographically, drawing on past experiences and how my mind functions. My process heavily involves tedious and repetitive processes, such as hand sewing, crocheting, and shibori. These processes are a form of meditation and self-placation in their own right. I find beauty in working interdisciplinarily, specifically in putting contrasting materials in the same piece. This practice most often represents the balance between obsession and avoidance, which is a constant struggle in my life.
My artistic roots will always be clothing and making garments, but recently I have been thinking about more than wearability. This past summer, I was faced with the indirect communication style and good old-fashioned Southern judgment of my childhood. From these feelings, I created the piece “My Egg.” The construction of this piece first involved me hand-sewing 1,500 feathers onto a handmade dress. I then created a 7-foot-tall egg out of chicken wire, paper mache, and my own bed sheets. After this intensive and deeply personal process, I sat in my dress inside of my egg out in front of my school’s cafeteria for all to see. To my peer’s confusion, I remained silent for 2 hours as I handed out feathers. This performance allowed me to accept that I have no idea how to properly communicate my feelings to those I love most. I invite them into my space and tear off pieces of myself for them to keep, but in the end, I only get hurt and leave them confused.
In my most recent work, Kudzu, I explore themes of obsession in the form of an all-consuming being. The entity I chose to represent this idea is the invasive vine called kudzu. During my childhood in North Carolina, I watched this vine eat up almost every forest around me and turn the underlying species into mush. I later equated this consumption to the nature of religious conformity in the American South. In this performance piece, I consider myself the vine and the ravaged host plant underneath. I chose to represent myself this way because I am the source of my obsessive, all-consuming behavior and the one who reaps its consequences. The method of construction is a crucial piece of the meaning of this performance. I chose to hand crochet the entire cloak, along with the expansive vines coming from it. This repetitive and time-consuming process represents the time that has been taken up by my incessant need to find patterns in the seemingly chaotic. The yarn I chose is thick and rigid, emulating the kudzu vine and the difficulty of changing my habits, no matter how detrimental. The thick and rigid material also represents the unchanging and potentially harmful beliefs I have observed in Christian spaces throughout my life.
