The last time I was at the bargain barn I found a trench coat by Michael Kors. No stains, the tan sort of ‘closet staple’ that every woman should own that they always talk about in magazines. When I bought it I was thinking about myself as one of those women—u know, with a little black dress and all the other ‘classic pieces’ that someone has in their Louis Vuitton luggage set when they travel for a long weekend. I was obsessed with this packing list that Joan Didion wrote in White Album—that idea that you only have a small set of carefully selected garments and objects that limits what you can do and wear on your vacation in a glamorous and effortless (looking) way. There is something about the curation of things that gives them value.

Anyway the Michael Kors Trench, I put it on and its just not me. Silver buttons and really, as much as I’d like to imagine, maybe I’m not a girl who wears little black dresses. I’m ok with my closet looking more like a polka dot and floral vomit center. I do love a wooden hanger.

Now I’m in the process of selling this coat on eBay and its sort of a conceptual project to make something I found in a shit heap seem like a closet staple for the girl-on-the-go. I like DIY advertising. How could this idea become more palpable as art? Trash-to-spectacle. When I worked for Anne Wilson she was setting up a lecture series ‘trash to spectacle’ (a phrase I know ive stolen and re appropriated as a mantra) and I helped brainstorm possible speakers, people like shinique smith and another guy who made really amazing African masks out of running shoes, I forget his name. I think Glenn Adamson spoke. I’m still fascinated with the idea of trash, the forgotten things, becoming important, valued. Its that old Japanese idea of a thing actually having more value when it is used. The cracks of wear being the point of value. My housemate saves every plastic yogurt container she uses, which is something that really bothers me. Its like there is a spectrum of value that hovers over everything, and the subjectivity of it all pricks us—VALUE is so crazy to me. Preciousness. Because that’s sort of what art is.

{photos: michael kors trench (now on ebay all you buyers!!, joan didion literary babe keepin chic, shinique smith mitumba deity (2005) c/o the brooklyn museum}

- my current inspirations for march-

polka dots, seams, and 3 D drawing

compulsive hoarding / stacking of trash & junk (on the ground)

closets and clothes hangers

{photo credits: 1 & 2 comme des garcons ss'10 rtw, 3 my own seam drawing, 4 sartorialist, 5 & 6 comme des garcons fw'09, 7 patrik ervell ss'11, 8 anselm kiefer's 20 Jahre Einsamkeit (twenty years of solitude) 1998, 9 hoarders on a&e graphic, 10 song dong's waste not, 11 assorted hangers, 12 closet (unknown sources)}

Portland show Themes: Pedestrian activity / Time / everyday / ritual / material

The word ritual is one that keeps coming up lately—something life affirming, a practice. If making things is a ritual, could it be a spiritual one? Like those Tibetan sand paintings , what is it about making something that might be destroyed? I threw away the physical remnants of my thesis aside for my favorite chunks. All that really mattered was that it was documented. Could it be a totally spiritual thing, to make something without reverence for what it becomes? Keep thinking about Penelope from the Odyssey, making and then unraveling, the unraveling to delay the completion of something, (does ‘finishing’ cause something?) Is having a ritual, something to feel like I have to do, is this a reaching, a process, waiting for finishing, for something to be over and become whatever vestige of its becoming it may become. My cat peed all over a pile of deflated pattern sculptures yesterday and I didn’t really care, I just shoved them under the table and I feel like it was supposed to happen, or a sign, or something. Is the sloppiness of the result part of it? Yes, because it makes you imagine its creation. But what if my show smells like cat piss?

I just realized I think one of my great problems is simply: what are the material traces of making? Is an unfinished or ‘unmade’ thing more revealing of its making than a finished thing, polished and clean?

one ritual I maintain is getting dressed everyday— and I’m obsessed with how the bargain barn has shaped my entire ethos about materials, and the way my closet is constantly being edited, evolved, swapped, etc.

for a while I thought I’d make some sort of system out of how I’d choose what to wear, or document it in some way. Theres something about choosing what I will wear that gears me up for the day, and even sets the tone for my experience. Even though I don’t lay my outfit the night before, theres something about clothes laid out on the ground as if a deflated person is wearing them: Miranda july’s learning to love you more . I really love this assignment, how the people lay their outfits on their beds as if preparing for the first day of school, and each one has personal significance.

{these photos from Miranda July's learning to love you more, assignment #55, 'Photograph a significant outfit'}

i’m pretty fascinated by the way process often is disconnected from ‘product,’ especially when it comes to clothing. before i decided what was actually my thesis, i starting making these drawings using clothing seams, with all the cloth cut away, attempting to activate drawing on a more human scale. this summer i started making more of them, and my parents who don’t usually put up my work put up one of the drawings in their living room. i thought it might be a sign that i should keep going with the idea. I like that the seams are where the fabric has been manipulated by the original maker; the drawings become a less literal way of depicting the process of construction than using the clothing patterns that I used in my thesis. i am also interested in what rauschenberg has called working in ‘the gap between art and life’ – there being this blurry line between my personal wardrobe and what I use as my materials in my work. i always think about the way a closet is constantly being edited as garments are worn, traded, found, and some, cut up and taken downstairs to the studio. And that they all have their own values, some in memory, some in brands or materials... i've always loved the way closets evolve, like my own personal curatorial archive of beautiful and not so beautiful hanging skins.

i am now wondering about dying the pieces black or darker/uniform colors to further extricate them from what they used to be? (these bra drawings, left, were black bras to begin with, but i like their direct black-on-white reference to drawing.)

i am trying to conceive of these things as not just confined to the wall… suspended in the air? Lying on the ground (like crime scene tapings?)? stiffened and upright like wire sculptures? Tangled like Eva Hesse stringy clouds from the ceiling? A shaft of seams releasing their anarchic energies in a direct column to the cosmos?

{all photos : all are my own seam drawings, except last tangly one is eva hesse, untitled (rope piece) 1970}