unmakings

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}