Sculptural Paintings (2017-2019)
For my first sculptural painting, which I made in summer 2017, I envisioned two figures at opposite ends of the canvas, at once reaching towards each other and pulling each other apart. Moving away from direct figural representation, I created Twin Separation Anxiety by tearing, twisting, and knotting canvas, building tension before slathering it in paint. This new form allowed me to express bodily emotions and interpersonal relationships in a physical way.
I continued to explore this sculptural language at a larger scale in What are we going to do now?. The measurements of each side come from the height of each member of my family. The bottom is mom, the top is my dad, and the sides are the heights of me and my sister when we were twelve and a half - the age we were when he died. I poured months of physical and emotional labor into the piece, building up layers and layers of canvas and paint. Then I cut out the top support and waited for it all to collapse. But it didn’t collapse. It bent and buckled and took on new forms. The very process of grief that I set out to embody became a metaphor for resilience.
I returned to the piece a year later and remade it into a sculptural installation. My dad passed away many years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that my mom shared with me a dream she had had on the night that he died in the ICU. She dreamt that the stillborn twins that she had given birth to before my sister and I came down and took him away with them. This image of the twin angels played over and over again in my head. And so I rebuilt this body: heavy and sagging, but also lifted up by these twin strands of translucent fabric. I called it I don't know if I believe in angels. The tension that this piece holds as it is both pulled away and grounded led me to my textile work.
I continued to explore this sculptural language at a larger scale in What are we going to do now?. The measurements of each side come from the height of each member of my family. The bottom is mom, the top is my dad, and the sides are the heights of me and my sister when we were twelve and a half - the age we were when he died. I poured months of physical and emotional labor into the piece, building up layers and layers of canvas and paint. Then I cut out the top support and waited for it all to collapse. But it didn’t collapse. It bent and buckled and took on new forms. The very process of grief that I set out to embody became a metaphor for resilience.
I returned to the piece a year later and remade it into a sculptural installation. My dad passed away many years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that my mom shared with me a dream she had had on the night that he died in the ICU. She dreamt that the stillborn twins that she had given birth to before my sister and I came down and took him away with them. This image of the twin angels played over and over again in my head. And so I rebuilt this body: heavy and sagging, but also lifted up by these twin strands of translucent fabric. I called it I don't know if I believe in angels. The tension that this piece holds as it is both pulled away and grounded led me to my textile work.