YES/ON 14th Street

YES/ON 14th Street is a processional performance for AiOP 2023: DRESS

Taking place in NY on October 13th, 14th, and 15th, 2023, two performers wearing my Text Toiles will address themes of intimacy, care, language and boundaries through the production, presentation, and dissemination of a series of care labels. With performers Erica Mott, Darling Shear, and in collaboration with Michael Workman, past and present-day literary histories surrounding 14th Street will enfold with questions of how identities are formed in relation to dress, and a specific, embodied sense of place.

"YES/ON 14th Street" is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Part Cloth: La Divisione, 2022

Part Cloth: La Divisione is a 10 minute, single channel video installation framing two views between my body and its surrounding cloth during Michelle Grabner's Nido residency at the International Center for the Arts in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy.

    

 Part Cloth: La Divisione Vimeo link

Wearing a dress I made from silk remnants, I ascended a staircase in the Persianni Studio Building to reach the highest accessible point of the village, and a view of the Tibor river. I took several videos through different openings from inside of the dress, capturing the fleeting moment of what was visible, and highlighting the presence of my body in relation to the scenic landscape. These views were recorded from the tower of a building which carries a history of landscape painting.

Installed at opposite ends in the crypt of the Church of SS. Filippo e Giacomo, Part Cloth: La Divisione is an integration of breakdowns and partings: the dress made of cloth parts, the parting of the dress to find a view, the projection of the video that parted the red velvet curtain, and the division of the dress into three remnants—two of which were installed in the projection windows opposite the stage where the video was installed. 

wall relief of dress parts

The body of the dress is now de-parted—a body of cloth split in a state of indeterminacy with remains in Monte Castelo di Vibio and Chicago. I am returning to Italy summer 2023 to revisit Monte Costello di Vibio, and restitch the dress parts for the staging of a new configuration of views.

This project was part of Michelle Grabner's 2022 robin, dove, swallow, thrush. An experimental exhibition alongside the artist residency called Nido organized by Michelle Grabner and Kelly Kaczynski at the International Center for the Arts, Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy.

YES/ON

YES/ON, SAIC Galleries, 2021

Yes/On is an installation of dress prototypes which I call Text Toiles. 

Drawing from my background as a dressmaker, I stitched the letters Y, E, S, O, N into the framework of a shift dress—a simple rectangular garment whose meaning and use have changed in step with historical cultural shifts. The familiar form of this classic dress in contemporary fashion began as a comfortable undergarment to protect the outer layers of clothing from bodily fluid. Through the craft of sewing these shifts, I attend to and openly address intimacy, reflecting on conversations with my family and peers about consent, dating apps, sex positivity, language and boundaries. Considering the parameters of interpersonal relationships as intertwined with the grain of cloth, I set up the conditions for each spectator’s particular correspondence to YES, to its counterpart NO, and its inverse ON through the display of these garments in various states of openness, completion and declaration. The meaning of these terms are reliant on voice and embodiment, as clothing and language both function and fail as a boundary. Working from the parameters and experiences of my own body, I see these dresses as a cloth envelope of space where thought and feeling merge. 

PDF link to Bridge Editorial: C is For Cut

photo Joerg Metzner, model Darling Shear

studio view of Text Toiles, June 2021

July 2020: This dress and its body, elsewhere

I return to the unraveling of edges—fringe as both a starting and ending point.

I am on the inside making my way out, speaking through cloth. My voice is absorbed in a garment—a body with its own pulse, shaped by hand and machine. I begin in the middle, between parts gathered and parts dispersed. 

Doubled

The remnant (present) has one side, a partial outline, a semi-ghost, an expanding gap between the remnant pile (past) and my body (future). An inverse of a trace, half of which is gone, the discard remains on site. This dress and its body are elsewhere.

2, 4, and 1: threads that intertwine with 3

a study of three beginnings

A is a beginning. 

A is a beginning. 

Might I begin? 

The wall is silent

A crack is a break in the solid.

A protest is a break in the silence.

An action 

begins with a break in the action, a crack in the action, let the crack be my letter. 

Intersection of lines be my H and my Y and my T

My High Tea 

My Mighty H Y T 

My H Y and T 

I begin.

The voice inside of a body, inside of a garment, inside of a room

I am making a dress. This dress is a cavity, in the shape of a cavity—of a body. It references, without resemblance, the convoluted corridor between the ear and the mouth, where so many senses and perceptions mix, lodge, pause, and exchange. This cavity contains the inner workings of the senses, not unlike the torso contains the inner workings of the organs. This cavity is a dress, a place of feeling. This space resides around me and inside of me.

Cloth as membrane. Dress as cavity. Cavity as facade.

This dress will be made from cloth remnants which I have stitched together over the past four months while writing my thesis. Some of these stitched works are small, some large, some irregularly shaped, some geometric. Some of my remnants—when stitched together—lie flat while others complicate each others edges and undulate, yielding a shadow of a curve of a body as it drapes. This dress will be a place of convergence—of bodies, of senses, of voices.

This cloth is dry and I want to lubricate it.

A remnant suggests otherness, a body gone elsewhere, the loss of a body or a people.  

In my pile of remnants I grapple with the absence of bodies, working the edges of loss, edges stalled by what (is) left. 

Goneness.

These edges are formed by removal—not demarcation.

Fringe is a removal of the internal framework of woven cloth, revealing structure by the absence of threads. It holds the memory of what was there, but is released from it. Fringe is evidence on the outskirts, an unruly edge establishing a frame that indicates something has left, while something still remains.

Free Dick Higgins 214 Projects, Dallas, September 2019

Performing Danger Music Number Sixteen, 214 Projects, Dallas-September 2019

Free Dick Higgins
"A side ways glance at the polymath artist, writer and publisher as seen through a modest selection of his publications, ephemera and performances." curator Brandon Kennedy 

Honesty, if you persist in it, especially if you persist in it for no particular reason, might almost become second nature. Similarly, by vigorous movement of the elbow, one can find oneself to be naïve. Is this why naïveté is the most useful of the virtues? 
Dick Higgins May,1962

Notes on a crawl space- SAIC Columbus Base Space

 Residency Installation-Year 2, July 2019

A staircase is an inverse relationship—reliant on some form of hierarchy—with the under side as one and the same as the upper side. Treads accumulate evidence of everyday ascensions and descensions. What is encountered has an impact on a body, and a body has an impact on what it encounters.

A flag is both signal and territory—a specific indicator and ground cover for a general topography. 

Columbus studio- summer 2019

north wall detail

corner detail

table top detail

wall drawing- chalk, glue, thread, leather

L- plans/ opens and shuts

L-plans/opens and shuts is an accumulation of materials, poems, and writing stored in a deconstructed 3 ring binder. Between March and May of 2019 I performed a sequence of actions in my own home, as my own subject, my own audience, creating my own documentation through video and writing. 

sentence scratch crack poem

edge of right angle defiance 

sign of line sign of lime 

earth in built powder

stone arm disarm man-made flat world

a crack is a ridge of a text bridge 

sheath of a surface

shallow here deep there poke me peel me 

doubting Thomas believe me

edge of expel in a wall page shadow 

stretch of sheath I seek your source

standing bird lady flying violent

stillness clothed naked 

a venus of sorts                                                                                 amongst other headless bodies

wet wood parting sea does not see                                                                                      you see?

another woman split up the middle

full frontal                                                                                                                  

on                                                    all 

four                                             sides

walking on water splintered by clipped wing

creamy stone grounded 

cool                                                                                    


murky provenance for future countertops

                                                                                                                                              Captured prowess 

utters mouthless cry of victory

and a translucent udder

sunk

a page, a flag, and a manual of instructions

Artists’ books avail the secretive, the unexpected, and the radical through a recognizable form. The obvious becomes less obvious by nature of content. The anatomy welcomes sensorial response; its hollows and folds, faces and edges, crevices and creases beckon turnings and returnings. Resting bed-like, text and image in repose, the book is a back to front body, generously contained and located. I enter and align my thinking with its bound materiality, confusing its demateriality. Participatory, collaborative, and communicative by nature, artists’ books require a meal-like pause, provide table top nourishment, and suggest a digestive viewing process.

5/7/2019 Tuesday 6:47 start time 

A self-subtraction 

Black-L darker today

Later today 

I began looking at the kitchen door leading to the hallway, and entered the L__________, Realizing once I shut the door that all the doors were not shut, as they have been for the past two performances. I shut the doors and began again (my bedroom door, bathroom door and window, Sarah’s bedroom door). I exited and entered again. I stepped into the right angle of the L___________ 

L_____________ Here and took a few breaths and wondered what makes this a performance 

(What makes this) a performance? And how will I record this. 

I walked to the south end of the L__________ X here 

and looked back at where I began 

The interval between the blinking green light seemed less even this time. Maybe my counting pace was irregular. I waited 3 intervals (of blinks) and then turned to my right and headed into the bathroom 

open closet linen door open linen closet left open toilet seat push shower curtain to the right then left, then right again, then left 

It remains pushed to the left and I left everything like that---------- OPEN 

I exited and shut the bathroom door behind me. I waited three intervals of the blinking smoke detector and then entered Sarah’s room. I slid her closet door shut, then slid it open again. I walked over to the shaded west window but could not see the outside. The shade is both translucent and opaque. It lets light in but I cannot see through it. I stared briefly at the south facing window and thought to leave. I then noticed two towels, wet lying on the ground, and studied their folds. I then thought to leave but noticed that the closet doors were swinging like a pendulum. 
I want to record this movement and sound 

(In writing this down I realize my actions are out of order) 

This actually happened before I went into Sarah’s room. After three intervals I went to the hallway closet and opened the door. It scares me to be in the dark, staring into more darkness. I count the space between the 5 shelves.

There are six intervals of space between the shelves.

The space between the shelves feels harmonious in its irregularity 

So I return to the exit from Sarah’s room. I exited the room and stood at the top of the L______. I walked up to the right angle and faced east, and realized the shift in light. I turned back to face south and walked to my bedroom door. I stared at my closed door then opened it, and made note of the light in the room and my clothing layered onto the caddy. I entered and turned and made a number of arrangements with the doors, more interested in the sound of the knocking than the arrangements today. I left the doors stacked without making note of how they were stacked. I turned around and walked around my bed to the bathroom. I noticed the glow of a light from Dewey school (that must be scheduled when it starts to get dark) 

It reminds me of the glow of blinking light. 
I stopped again.

The window was open because of the WD40 oil used on my faucet 2 1⁄2 weeks ago. I shut the door behind me and felt my body in the smaller space. I opened and shut the shower door twice, placing my hang bar just right so the shower door just cleared it, with a minimal amount of space, and thought about how one thing can brush up against another even when it doesn’t touch it. I left the shower door closed, and opened the lined closet. Opened. I do not remember if I left the toilet seat open. I stared out the window and noticed some lilacs blooming, and the bright green of the apple blossom tree outside. Is it an apple blossom (or crab apple)? I noticed my face in the mirror, and felt I exited the bathroom and shut the door behind me my chin and neck I looked at myself in the mirror and walked around my bed and out of the room. I waited three intervals at the south end of the L__________. I then walked to the right angle of the L_________ and looked east. I stared at the light coming through the vent, then walked to the east where Helen’s room is and looked at the light from that angle. I then stayed for two intervals of blinks and walked towards the kitchen door. I paused to notice the glow from the alarm keypad on the wall. It was like a neon shadow. I want to photograph that glow 

My end time today was 6:58. This action was just over 10 minutes today. It is now 7:41. I have been writing for 40 minutes