The Crows’s Nest is a climate action and environmental justice art incubator located in Baltimore and I have been following them for a while now as their mission really resonates with me. So when I received the message that the curator was interested in my textile and encaustic piece “I Have Been Birthed Many Times Over” for this exhibit, I was thrilled.
I think that I am especially excited because this piece came forth because it needed to. It was one of those. I wrote about it in a previous post and I have come to see it as a vessel where I had all these unexpressed emotions that needed to come through. I am grateful that I get to share it on the walls outside my studio and maybe it will speak to someone else’s unexpressed emotions as well.
I was asked to write an artist statement that addresses the theme of the exhibition. Thought I’d share it here:
Artist Statement:
My artwork is a dialogue with the natural cycles of life, the passage of time, and memory. Often in my work there is a sense of longing and desire to reconnect with the earth. Through both imagery and medium, I create organic pieces that speak to the interconnectedness of all living things. This piece contains no imagery, which is a departure from my usual body of work. I painted over the imagery with white and tore up pieces of fabric and attached them to the surface. This was a visceral reaction to the cutting of programs and funding and the attempted erasure of history and people when the current administration stepped in.
The materials in this piece are from salvaged textiles- linens, crocheted doilies, and even a baptism gown, that bring their own histories to the surface. The pieces of fabric are held together by encaustic, a medium made of beeswax and damar resin, and hand stitching. I have always turned to stitching in my mixed media pieces for different reasons- the texture, the idea that we are all connected, the evidence of the human hand, a reference to what was considered women’s work and motherhood. It is also a reference to mending, healing, and repair of something that has been torn or ripped apart. The idea of taking things that have been discarded and bound for landfills and reusing them in my creative process is a way to reject that we live in a disposable culture where people are also considered disposable, and to acknowledge that this way of living is unsustainable.
This piece contains my grief and longing for a different world. As many generations before have done time and again, can we gather what is broken and in disrepair and stitch back what is purposefully being destroyed?
You can read the curatorial statement for this show here.