works in progress
the future heirlooms shop
Wedding dresses will be refashioned into functional everyday items such as: shopping totes, dish towels, dog beds, tissue box cozies. A single-use luxury item will be transformed into useful things that can be treasured for a lifetime. Future Heirloom wedding dress transformation will be a service available to anyone wishing to give their wedding dress a valuable new life.
the uniform project
Phase One of this project involves creating a working uniform for the artist. A series of simple skirts and shirts, identical in cut and construction, will be customized and embellished by hand using print and stitching (name tags, etc.). The uniform will be worn whenever I work, both at my job and in the studio.
Phase Two of The Uniform Project will involve seeking out local businesses to partner with in an exploration of the work uniform as an impersonal signifier of a worker's position in society and the labour that worker performs. The artist will design new uniforms or alter existing uniforms for workers in a variety of service industries in an attempt to have those uniforms better capture the essence and import of the work being performed. The inclusion of labour intensive hand work in what is normally an industrially produced utilitarian covering will counteract the sense of sameness and loss of self that wearing a uniform implies. Alterations could be as simple as a hand embroidered name tag or knitted pocket or as drastic as a whole new garment customized for the industry in which the uniform will be worn.
Production of The Uniform Project has been funded in part by The Ontario Arts Council.
a history of monsters
A series of drawings in progress for an upcoming exhibition of tattoo flash, inspired by early printed biology books and travellers' tales.
the sweater factory
Secondhand wool sweaters are unravelled and reknitted into one long panel on a knitting machine. Pattern pieces will then be cut from this panel and sewn together into new sweaters, leaving behind the remnants of the panel with garment-shaped holes cut from it. Finished sweaters will be given away to those who visit and view the project.
As with Study for a Remnant Factory (2008), the project focuses on the artist performing a daily routine of seemingly useless labour, dismantling something and reassembling it, through a tedious process, into essentially the same thing. While the installation is reminiscent of a factory floor and the actions taken by the artist and the rules and schedules adhered to mimic those of assembly line labour, the finished product is a unique handcrafted object, and the act of giving that object to strangers is an intimate, domestic and loving act.
The Sweater Factory had a twelve-day trial run in June 2010 as part of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, an initiative of Windsor, Ontario-based arts and research collective Broken City Lab. With that experience, I am currently tweaking the project in hopes of taking the Sweater Factory on the road and realizing it at a larger scale.
the listening project
LPs in my personal collection (currently numbering about a thousand) are recorded in a database, photographed and cleaned in preparation for listening. The records will be listened to in chronological order by release date, and a live discussion of each listening session will take place on a website devoted to the project. The discussions will be open to anyone and will remain archived on the website. The web portion of the project is expected to start in the fall of 2010. This project is in collaboration with my partner, Peter Zimmerman.
consuming time
Drawings and prints in progress (ballpoint pen, watercolour, woodcut printing on paper).
This ongoing series is focused on counting and recording markmaking as a meditative process of production. Radiating series of lines are counted as they are drawn. Domestic handmade textiles, a metaphorical stand-in for the time and work they represent, are traced and drawn and mapped and measured, and will eventually recede beneath slowly applied layers of other countings and mappings.
memory mapping
Drawings in progress (mixed media on paper).
Maps of the neigbourhood in which I live are blended and altered to become maps of all of the places I have been, drawn from memory. The drawings are an exploration of the unreliability of memory and the impermanence of places.
great lakes tourist
Part one: Great Lakes map tattoo.
Part two: Self portrait and ceremonial leap into each of the Great Lakes. I grew up swimming in Lake Huron, and although I've been close to all of the other lakes at times, I've never touched them.
Part three: Self portraits with Great Lakes maps.