My most recent fabric installations touch on concerns regarding surface and our relationship to material, the body, fashion/surface design, and protection and safety. I source my fabric from thrift stores, deadstock fashion fabrics, and repurposed materials; I make inks and natural dyes, sourced from plants around my home and studio; forms and shapes are drawn from family memories and stories. The speculative, sensory, poetic, and aesthetic qualities are considered along with research into where the materials came from and who made them through a political, ecological, and historical lens.
In this newest body of work, I have started experimenting with fabric manipulation techniques such as smocking and pleating within my dyed and painted fabric. By using such techniques and adjusting the scale and context of them, and re-situating it within that of a painting or an installation, the work considers how different systems and functions change the experience and expectations of material.
One of the particular fabric manipulation techniques that I am currently researching is smocking. Although this technique is currently mostly associated with decorative embellishments in children’s clothing and domestic decor, its history arises from a hand-sewing method developed in the Middle Ages to create utilitarian garments. With this method, the fabric is gathered in pleats and hand-sewn into designs that can stretch. Unlike other embroidery techniques, which were historically decorative status symbols, smocking was unique in its original utilitarian function that allowed for zero-waste garment construction, flexibility, and - with the folds of the fabric - added warmth.
The history and transformation of smocking speak to how, on a broader scale, materials are made up of fluid layers of meaning and narratives and the relationships and dynamics they hold. By reimaging these technical and decorative approaches as abstract and gestural marks, I hope to draw out and play with the layers and to examine the complexity within them.
More images coming soon.
This project was made with the support of a Creative’s Reserve Grant from the Edmonton Arts Council.
