Fresh Eyes
This series is an attempt at autobiography. Of who I was and who I am. But also, a collective autobiography. Of women, as objects of affection, and of prying and admiring eyes. I started in the world of fashion, a world of beauty and the not-so-beautiful, of the spectator and the spectacle. A world of transformation, writ large.
“Are not couturiers the poets who, from year to year…write the anthem of the feminine body?”I paint in order to share, to stand in someone else’s shoes and invite them to stand in mine. It is strange how our eyes adapt, incorporating the odd wrinkle, recasting our whole selves into something that makes sense.
We look back in order to remember and recover—and to obscure. To relive what may or may not have transpired.
Skin-Dipping
This series is done in collaboration, as part of "&Hooked". We started with the following question. What would happen if, instead of adorning and covering our bodies with animal hides, we were able to imprint imaginary hides directly onto our skin? Sometimes silly questions provoke serious answers.
“It is impossible to be completely abstract about clothes because they have no life unless they are worn. They must fit onto a body or they do not exist.”We began by photographing the trunks, or, more precisely, the bark of bald cypress, pecan, sweet gum, saw-tooth oak, and dogwood trees. Some were speckled and smooth, others corrugated and deeply furrowed.
We then projected these photographs, full-length, onto my body, and photographed again. The resulting images were Baudrillarded: recursively spliced and replicated; refracted and refractalled.
And out came simulated, sustainable, alligator skin, leopard pelts, and would-be-hides, ready to be turned into a handbag, a pair of shoes, or pillbox hat.
