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StatementHand stitching isn’t fast work. It’s a quiet skill that feels tenuous, nearly lost when placed in a contemporary context; it slips away like childhood, like domesticity, like safety beneath the weight of something handmade. I sew because I don’t know what it is to not sew. It’s this expectation of what the hand-sewn form is — protective, warm, decorative — so much like the definition of the domestic role, which compels me to heave against it. I take the traditional, beautiful handwork I was taught as a girl, then later as a professional seamstress and couch it within the painful, uncomfortable or frightening. My intent is to create thoughtful, arresting work, reliant on layers of narrative within the pieces themselves and within the history each viewer brings.
This is time-based work, using old skills. An act of cutting apart, then piecing oneself back together. |