shirts all the way downArt, not as a means for representing the body but rather, as decorum for the body itself
in progress
From high fashion to everyday wear, the tradition of clothing in Western Culture is to remain deceptively apolitical. Yet even the most seemingly inconspicuous clothing item sends a message about the body in relation to its position within a larger societal structure in terms of gender, race, and class. This messaging goes beyond the supposed meaning conveyed by the graphic T, which often detracts from the signifying qualities of the clothing item itself, devoid of verbal or visual meaning.
With this project, I explore clothing as, in the case of the turtle shell, protection and extension of the body. But more than that, the turtle, for me, is symbolic of what screen printing has allowed me to do: make the seemingly rigid building blocks of culture malleable. While I see all art as a means for the individual to take up and play with those elements, screen printing, I would argue, is particularly characteristic of this playing with structure.
The mesh is a filter, the stencil atop of which is selectively hardened via exposure to light so as to determine where ink can and can not be deposited. The turtle embodies this same tension between rigidity and fluidity. The shell is rigid and exposed, while the parts of the turtle that can be concealed are (like the areas of the mesh screen left unexposed to light) animate and workable.
The Shell Series
Turtle Girl
The Floral Series
The Flame Series
Through my art practice, I explore intersections among identity, representation, sensory perception, and culture. Working primarily between charcoal and screen printing, I am a passionate proponent of hybridity, mixing media to achieve a final product. As a fanatic for medium and message relationships, my use of mixed media often reinforces the content of my work, which interrogates systems of rigid categorization, asks who implements them and who benefits from them, and suggests an openness to other ways of seeing. I believe that the process is the art itself, that myself the artist is merely a participant in the creative act and the art a record of it. Through my work, I hope to give viewers a window into that process where deep, nuanced connections are made- to consider how the making of the work informs the meaning.