Dollhouse is a series of works exploring distance from early forms of self, emotional inheritance, and formative environments through abstraction into the archetypal – specificity of experience, memory, and surroundings compressed over time into the primeval outline through which we define our reality.
Dense quilt stitches collect on weeper and shadow girl’s and shadow dog (rocko)’s secondhand skin — a pinch and puncture and pull and drag — with repetitive cycles of damage and mending and compression tenderizing the fabric. Their shadows, constructed of constituent stitches, rows, and shapes, stretch into formless space.
The dolls are anthropomorphized familial chimeras. Their forms are borrowed and reinterpreted from old photos unearthed in shoeboxes. The girls, unit of three illustrates the grafting of three discrete identities into a single entity; a kind of triplet monster burdened by its aggregate body. Butterfly, unit of one, based off of an early Halloween costume, is a talisman of individuality; of primordial exuberance broadcast to the world through a girlish mask. The twins, unit of two, also in reference to a costume worn by myself and my twin sister, is a pair of incompatible characterizations umbilically tethered, exchanges made between them peristaltic and continuous. They slump and languish in their dormancy, available for psycho-identification and puppeting.
weeper, secondhand quilt blocks, sewing thread, embroidery thread, crochet and knit with yarn, wire
shadow girl, secondhand quilt top, batting, denim, thread, crochet and knit with yarn, wire, 55x34in
shadow dog (rocko), secondhand quilt top, batting, thread, crochet and knit with yarn, wire, 52x25in
The girls, unit of three, yarn, wire, cotton stuffing, secondhand quilts, 70x85x44in
dimmer, knit with yarn, wire, 33x40in
5107, knit with yarn, wire, 12x12in
end table, knit with yarn, wire, 33x40in
Butterfly, unit of one, crochet with yarn, wire, secondhand quilt, thread, cotton stuffing, 63x32x8in
