unmakings

everyday objects teem with the labor that made them, yet seem disconnected from their making. reverting objects to their original plans for construction, destroying them, rebuilding them. by 'unmaking' i address the importance of making. using maps and plans as systems to follow-- a personal ritual.

in my thesis i followed clothing patterns and then diverged from the instructions and created a new system out of them. in this installation i reinterpreted a common but little-known process of construction. similarly in my stop-motion animations, i abstract the system inherent to knitting (a system of interdependent knots). i projected unraveling and reconfiguring integrated structures of thread onto a limestone wall, making it appear alive.
allowing for the processes of making to be integral to a piece's form is important to me. in my seam drawings, i cut away parts of garments that aren't manipulated by the original maker, leaving just the seams behind that creates a drawing of their making.
in my newest scenic installation, i created both interactive sculpture and physical drawings in space using ribbon and a traditional weaving structure on a large scale. the form of the space could be manipulated by performers' interactions with it in a dance theater piece for which it was the set.
with amending in new orleans, the animations of intricate unravelings and rebuildings of knitting structures were projected onto an abandoned building. like moving drawings, they were spidery and referenced building and breaking and rebuilding in the city.

{Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's Dead See (2005). Filmed from above, a spiral of watermelons slowly unravels, becoming a green line that leaves the frame. Its hard to tell that these are watermelons, they look like beautiful beads. This is a still image from her video}