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project statement
At the invitation of the Pilchuk Glass School in the summer of 2005, and at two subsequent residencies in 2006 (R.I.T. and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma), I became committed to a concept requiring the glass medium. In watching the movement of the gaffers, I realized the relatedness of textile processes to glass -- glass is flexible and can be fibrous when molten. By translating fiber bobbin winding, or rewinding, into glass we are able to produce and exploit aesthetic analogies between these two modes of production. This work was accomplished with the remarkable glass skills of gaffers and glass artists Jessica Julius, Nancy Callan, Katherine Gray, Kimberly Pence, Ben Cobb, Alex Stisser, Conor McClellan, R.I.T. students, and others.
From a larger social perspective, the rewind project addresses issues that exist within highly technological societies like ours (our renewed enthusiasm for hand crafting and tactility in response to digital screen culture), and most of the world where objects such as these rewinds represent conditions of labor, economic survival, and a very non-romantic presence of the hand. In fundamentally clashing social, economic, and cultural contexts -- from the Tibetan refugee weaving studios in northern India, to European couture workshops, to the weaving studios in western art schools -- fiber rewinds exist as objects of similar function and practical resourcefulness. They are how textile workers save small lengths of fiber for later re-use. Glass fixes the process in time and allows for meditation on highly disparate cultural contexts about art, cloth, and cultural production.
Several works and exhibition venues are in consideration for the presentation of this work.
Museum of Glass 2006 Residency
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research
No other point in history offers a more striking example of cloth as a means to social and political change than Gandhi's use of homespun and hand-woven cotton (Khadi) in his diligent and heroic fight to bring about India's independence from Britain. Gandhi believed the act of home spinning could provide people with a practical means of making a living and economic self-empowerment through a local economy of labor and production without reliance on trade with Britain. Gandhi's fight for weaving and spinning was an attempt to give back a sense of power and personal agency to those he was fighting for, and it offers us insight into how an everyday practice can take on a larger meaning.
The current resurgence of craft as art/hobby and the DIY movement in the U.S. speaks to a variety of conditions, one of which is a fight for agency in the production of our goods. With the flood of digital technologies and the emergence of hands-off living strategies, a desire for more tactile and hands-on experiences has arisen. In the late 1990's, as a result of various changes in international textile trade agreements, a steep hike occurred in the percentage of textile goods imported to the U.S., as did a dip in textile labor performed on U.S. soil. A vast disconnect has hence grown between buyer and product, wearer and maker as more and more production takes place overseas. Textile processes such as weaving, spinning, and knitting are experiencing a revitalization, as people become engulfed in these cultural changes and wish to regain personal agency in regards to the goods we purchase and wear everyday.