Walls / Skin
Fences divide people and mark boundaries. Walls divide people and provide privacy. In my work, I stitch together walls and fences out of paper, aluminum screen, pantyhose, discarded materials, and fabric. My work is a way of quantifying grief while searching for hope. Hope comes in the form of light let through a tiny window. Cutting window after window with a run-down box cutter, then mending the windows with fabric, act as meditative processes that release anger through crude craft.
The body acts as a wall. Skin divides people. We all have pores, hair, we all shed old layers, we all age, and our bodies remember the days. Claudia Rankine writes in Citizen,
Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body
is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness - all the
unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived
through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside,
among, a part of the games” (28).
Our humanity is inextricably linked to our bodies, our flesh. This work helps me refine questions I have about being human and flawed, rather than worry about finding answers that aren’t there.