Surface Tension

For me, used clothing immediately brings to mind questions about who wore a garment and under what circumstances. This collection began with a 2020 commission to produce a temporary work of public art on the theme of working class memory for a former Steelworks complex in Gier Valley in Southeastern France. I made a site-specific soft sculpture with 300 articles of used workwear and then, a year later, decided to repurpose this source material into various 3d surfaces, from flags, to compositions on stretcher bars, to immersive surfaces and shapes. These works evoke absence and presence, pride in collective labor, and loss on an individual and communal scale, from absent labor laws, the effects of globalization and offshoring, and the digitization of manual processes.

Over time, after sewing together garments in ways that emphasized existing seam lines and retained shapes of their former use, I also became interested in buckles, zippers and other fasteners and the metaphorical power of openings, pockets, tunnels, and closing mechanisms. Within this series, I am currently exploring abstract compositions with zippers and new works that combine textiles and cast metal.