Mended Hides
2023

Art and its materiality are in an increasingly unique position to inform our selfhood—altering our present, future, and even past. Taking a look back on my upbringing in rural Iowa, I regularly use materials and motifs familiar to me. At an early age, I had been introduced to the slaughtering process and death that has left a lasting impact. Yet, this existential fear ran parallel to the serenity of the repetitive and rhythmic patchwork of fields that I called home. Likewise, my work aims to confront my existential anxiety and trauma while also celebrating the positive qualities of human limitedness through themes of livestock and its byproducts that evoke mortality.

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I implement handwoven animal fibers and the hides of livestock into my creative practice to also highlight the exhaustive and repetitive, yet cathartic actions involved in craft processes. Greatly informed by the works of Candice Lin, Janine Antoni, and Lin Tianmiao, I want to demonstrate a sensory experience—the way we touch, feel, and the way we come to understand and relate—by exploring careful and rhythmic repetition using my own body as an instrument. By using the cowhide motif, my work becomes a relic of what was once there but is no longer present—blurring the line between sculpture and performance. In a way, the mended cowhide becomes a portrait.

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As I continue to investigate art objects and textiles, I want to demonstrate a metaphorical yet literal translation from “world to word” by over-spinning animal fibers into looping lengths of yarn and mending the hides of livestock that give these transient points of cognizance a necessary permanence. When constructing these mended hides, I aim to recognize the physical and mental effort of rituals and endurance while simultaneously celebrating the meditative nature of these actions. I want to allow myself lived experiences that realize sensations.