Artist Statement for the Piercings Series

“She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day. . . She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret, interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully plowed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair and costume, for a fissure through which to explode,” wrote Anais Nin. Her novel, A Spy in the House of Love, articulated one woman’s desire to contain and control her emotions.

The Piercings Series continues a theme I have pursued for the past ten years – the ramifications related to both the expression and the containment of emotion, particularly as it concerns women. I combine flexible, fibrous materials with inflexible objects to create art about handwork, domesticity and female assertiveness.

As fur covers an animal’s skin and acts as physical protection, the Piercings Series metaphorically suggests a shelter for the mind through its physical expression of emotional battles. By wrapping a metal trap in silk, coating a convex mirror in velvet or piercing soft leather with sharp pins and barbed quills, I reveal emotions “best contained in polite society.” Similarly, while the straight pin is usually considered a useful and innocuous object, it becomes dangerous when mishandled. Carefully gathered and given voice, they become beautiful, sharp and confident.