Thank you thank you! for having me!
I’m just gonna jump in!
I’m a project based artist – trained in textiles tend to work slowly/ACcumulatively – also love a repeat – love a pattern –
2 big projects going on in my studio – both of them are NEW continuations of older work. And are also just NEW - very fresh. Taking a risk –
I’m gonna start by talking about the flashier of the two:
Ventilated Workwear:
I started this project in 2016. It’s a wearables project: a conceptual clothing line of anti-uniforms.
To “ventilate” this workwear, I cut grids into pre-existing articles of protective work clothing – coveralls, rubber gloves, safety goggles…etc
–I leave the edges unprotected– so with more use, the grid frays exposing more of the worker’s body: coveralls covering less.
How it began: I started Ventilating Workwear within the first year I lived in NYC. I knew I was going to be laid off from a high-end retail job, so I wore GRIDsuits to work and sold them. When I was laid off, I survived off those commissions – and continued ventilating workwear for a year. I printed out ventilation business cards. Went to as many free queer art events, as I could in NYC, I left my house everyday wearing a gridsuit and passed out my cards to anyone who was interested.
UNIFORM FOR SELF
NYC is a city that makes you work a lot because it’s very expensive. When I first got there, as a 23 year old. I felt like my worth as a human was fully defined by how much money I made and how successful I was at a job. A jobby Job. Culture shock from Baltimore (where I’m from).
So, I wanted to create a uniform for myself for the labor that aligned more with the work that I was doing– surviving as a queer person, finding queer community, finding my queer identity, more emotional labor category
So I worked with the coverall.
I was interested in changing the function of coveralls. from protective/industrial labor to embodied or emotional labor. Coveralls stand for conformity and a uniform that purposefully is not differentiating one body from other bodies, GRIDsuits do the opposite of that – they’re made up of tiny windows that reveal who is underneath.
I chose the grid because it’s a standardized form of containment and industrial production. Also – As the person hand-cutting with an Xacto knife all of these rectangles, I wanted a simple pattern to follow and produce.
One suit would take about 5-8 intimate hours of cutting – with an Xacto knife and scissors. I would get a little sentimental when sending off the gridsuits, – sending them to college to have their own lives. I would ask the wearers to send me pictures because I kind of missed them and wanted to know what the suits were up to.
Obviously, you know, it’s an important practice to document your work. But also, I was curious – and would get a range from selfies to actual magazine spreads.
This project was a tool for finding queer community in a new place. This is Barbara Hammer, a pioneer lesbian filmmaker in a custom GRIDsuit, she commissioned one from me a year before she passed away of cancer.
She is a lesbian icon. She is someone whose work I have always admired, and can’t really believe that I’ve ever gotten to work with her. I went to one of her openings in a gridsuit, and she came right up to me and said: “it’s like you’re wearing a film strip.” She asked me to make her one. She wore her suit like armor to her final public appearances.
I was approached a few months ago by curator and lesbian art historian, Ksenia M. Sobo-leeeeva, on making an exhibition for the ten year anniversary of Ventilated Workwear. Full disclosure– this wasn’t out of the blue, she is a curator I have worked with in the past and a friend, someone who knows my work well.
In our conversations, we talk about exhibiting the objects similarly to how they are here– University of Maryland Show. Hanging on pegboards, outlined – like tools in a studio workshop. But borrowing gridsuits that people from the Ventilated Workwear community have worn and worked in. And gather what ventilated work people did in them. A Where (Wear) are they now? exhibition.
Recently, I received a very intriguing email. from Baltimore City Hall’s exhibition curator, inviting me to exhibit work within the gallery/main foyer of Baltimore City Hall. This curator was interested in showing work from Baltimore Artists directly responding to gun violence. Extremely excited and intimidated –
I have never made work to go in a government building. I didn’t even know that there were curators in the city halls. I do not live in Baltimore, but I am from there and have community there I DO make work in response to gun violence.
I should preface this by elaborating ~ The last few years, I made work processing trauma from gun violence. In America, gun violence is an enormous public health issue: from PTSD of those of us who have lost loved ones, or survived, to our downright safety. For Americans 1 out of 5 of us can say they have lost someone to gun violence. I am one of those people.
This is the first and last piece of work I made in grad school. Between my two years, I attended the Annapolis Capital Gazette Mass shooting Criminal trial to represent my dad, who was killed that day, while he was working as an editor.
I’m going to only talk about the first image. An installation called: Complete the day: Installation of a hypothetical choreographic notation of how my dad would have finished his work day– if the mass shooting never occurred.
To do I interviewed my dad’s surviving coworkers on his mannerisms, his habits, things that they remember him saying to him. “Find people who are doing the work, and talk to them.” “what is the story here?” and remember him calling the bathroom the “little sport’s writers room”. Etc
I hand dyed sheets of silk – chartreuse, and cut them to size: 3x3 inches– standardized size of post-its. Wrote in just pen ink– those small gestures/habits – And even used post-it restickable glue to adhere them to different parts of this Anderson Gallery.
Silk is a protein fiber – dyes with Acid– really bright colors are possible–highlighter bright
Silk also has this – ghostly like Transparency – that floats and flutters in a particular haunting way
Silk worms are boiled alive in the process of making silk. An animal had to dye to make this. In more than one way.
Similar to Ventilated workwear: I’m taking a pre-existing object and altering the physical form to changing the original use.
Instead of a post-it being something you write a reminder for yourself
A Silk post-it is a place to write a reminder of someone’s life that is no longer with us. Then it becomes a memorial.
Something I experience with my grief– is that small minor details, objects, memories of this person become monumental because there’s no more time with this person, right?. Complete the Day is a memorial to their everyday ~
To make work about victims’ lives, not focusing on their deaths.
So in thinking about Balti City hall –
It didn’t quite make sense to put my own Complete the day there. My love, my loss – that felt too self-centered. Also the mass shooting happened in Annapolis, MD, not Baltimore. So I used this as an opportunity to invite people into this project. Participatory – and collaborative through that avenue.
Audience: Government workers, the mayor, facilities folx, janitors, security, and citizens who need to pay a parking ticket etc. You must be authorized to enter, and walk through a metal detector. So, participants in this project can’t just enter the building and post a post-it on the wall. Also– I feel like that’s a lot to ask of people. And how to find victims’ family members. In my own experience, of being amongst 4 other families in our
So design problem: I needed a container that provided a space to collect and store participants’ responses.
I talked to my friend, Mariah – who is going to design a website to do this !
Website Archive: Complete The Day –
Input Form:
Dear Victim’s loved one, How would you like to complete your loved ones day? What city did it happen in?
Text appears on a digital post-it -draggable on a webpage. Amassing others/per city
I find that a website is much easier to pass along, also easier to cry in your own house, than a public place. I feel better inviting others in –when it’s just in their home.
The collection of web post-its will be transcribed onto physical, silk post-its. I can create silk post-its to adhere to the inside of Baltimore City Hall.
There are lots of moving parts to this project– like FONT – and how to capture handwriting on the web? And many more– but it’s beginning stages–
