Worn World
Sculpted paper collaborative installation with poet Ginny Hoyle
The three-dimensional sculpted paper garments in this body of work address the fragility of human life and the vulnerability of the human body, while saluting the enduring strength of the human spirit. Paper has been employed to create the garment shapes for a reason. Since antiquity paper has documented every step of history, but it is also a fragile material, and can easily dissolve in the rain or be destroyed in times of war and upheaval.
In a moment in time when the world of politics and policy is careening toward autocracy, each of the constructed garments is offering a prayer.
Individual pieces are fabricated collage images, including ink work, newsprint, paint and paper. Text is embedded in each paper garment, honoring the histories and journeys of more than 40 million mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, elders, who have lost their homes due to drought, famine, war and the whimsy of authoritarian leaders around the world.
The garments and their accompanying writings convey a story of the fabric of humankind, which often protects and projects people into a brilliant, but bewildering world.
I was in a living room serving coffee naked—
hunched over, hiding behind my bent arm
oddly unconcerned
about the breeze on my ass.
Stripped
I was in a living room serving coffee naked—
hunched over, hiding behind my bent arm
oddly unconcerned
about the breeze on my ass.
No one noticed, which is good.
Or else it’s sad. Everyone was hunched over phones,
Sipping, reading, lost in thought.
It was like being dropped into a party where you know
at once
you don’t belong and you can’t find your ride
and you can’t
find the door and frankly,
you’d settle
for finding a towel.
Look
the sky is falling
fire.
More and more,
I feel stripped of all the old illusions.
Don’t you?
More and more,
it’s 4:00 am. I lie awake, trying
not to think.
Mama said there’d be nights like this but
she never said what to take, where to hide,
what to hum as the shells burst
and how to count, how to save
all the broken
children of the world.
No sleep.
The noise from the stars
troubling.
About The Garments
For this work the form of paper life-size garments from a variety of cultures are used as a symbol of personal protection and the external forces and interior fragilities that shape each individual.
Behind barred windows and locked doors, footsteps echoed down the corridors.
The Big Shrug
The system is broken. The system is broke.
Was it ever not?
Remember that red brick asylum at the edge of town?
Yes, asylum: meaning refuge, meaning shelter, meaning haven,
meaning you are safe.
But all that showed from the street was iron fencing, sidewalks, shaggy shrubs.
Behind barred windows and locked doors,
footsteps echoed down the corridors.
People inside set aside,
“put away” like outgrown toys.
Bedlam. Booby hatch. Funny farm.
Fluorescent lights. Buzzers. The sound of a key in a lock.
Were they helped? Were they cured?
Or just housed until they died?
Troubled eyes. Vacant eyes.
Gabbled words and strangled screams.
Hospital smells. Other smells.
Bodies, bleach, oblivion and pain.
Loony bin. Madhouse. Cuckoo nest.
Stop. Don’t show me any more.
But the system.
Think of taxes! Think of votes!
What is the role of the state?
What is the cost of compassion?
What is the price of neglect?
Those places closed.
Patients dispersed to towns without funds,
to clinics without beds, to families lost in a maze of dead ends
in houses without peace or sleep.
Mind out of body—a lost balloon.
Millions and millions of lost balloons
floating so close to the sun.
Beggars on corners.
Life on the streets.
Nights under bridges.
Years behind bars.
Well, the system is broken. Everyone knows.
The state of the art
is dark.
The Big Shrug, 2019
30 h x 26 wide x 16 deep (when jacket is tied).
Tyvek, sumi ink, thread, buckles.
Form based on the straitjacket used to restrain mental health patients at risk of hurting themselves or others. Created in response to the massive inadequacy of mental health care in the United States and the suffering that results.
The Other, 2018
36h x 57w x 9 deep.
Paper, silk, linen thread, book board.
Form based on Karakalpakstan* cloak worn by women. The myth of racial identity. Outrage over the use of racial epithets and racial coding to intimidate, instill fear, create division and repress people of color.
*The Karakalpaks (who call themselves Qoraqolpoqlar) are a people of Central Asia. They lived within the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union until it was dissolved in 1991. Today their territory is within independent Uzbekistan.
Small Legs Grow Tired, 2017
33h x 31 w x 6 deep.
Paper, ink, acrylic, thread, discarded children’s toys.
Form based on Kurte, Turkmen* child’s robe. Created in response to the plight of children forced to hide in shelters with their parents, barely out of harm’s way, deprived of the simple comforts of home and childhood* Turkmenistan is located in Central Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea, between Iran and Kazakhstan.
Sleeping Beauty isn’t sleeping anymore.
And it’s not the kiss of a prince that left her woke.
RISE UP!
Where there was fear,
there is fear denied.
Where there was silence,
there is silence defied.
Where there was darkness,
there’s the scorch of a million
suns.
Sleeping Beauty isn’t sleeping
anymore.
And it’s not the kiss of a prince
that left her woke.
It’s millions of voices
speaking up, speaking out—the whisper
that became a shout.
It’s a movement on the move
and there’s no turning back.
Love speaks.
Love knows.
Love dares.
Love leads,
holding those familiar scales
and one iconic torch.
Woke Woman Walks, 2018
56 h x 26 w x 15 deep (closed robe dimension).
Rice paper, sumi ink, tacks, wire, thread.
Form based on the book Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. An imagined protective robe for women in a culture of misogyny. The garment is based on the idea of wrapping oneself in roses with the thorns on the outside and flowers on the inside as a means of protection. In the collection of Donna and Orwin Baker-Breningstall.
Worn World Gallery
