sewn series, summer 2005

When The Real Thing uses articificial sweeteners we must see that although real is always better we often prefer the simulated. Real breasts are best, but enhanced breasts are more ideal. Queasy about genetically enhanced food stuffs even though they are improved? Knee jerk nostalgia or intuition / instinct? And if nostalgia includes 1980's computer games then are fatter pixels more real? Or really is it just nowadays that old fashioned happens to be more real? In the future the virtual could be something we only remember. Once the lights go out.

Working with pixels everyday I know one thing for certain: be it faux-nostalgia for a skill I never had or an ancestral need for tactile work, I was drawn to sewing this summer. Or rather, to drawing with thread. The texture, evidence of process through lack of undo's, and my amateur control of Grandma's New Home Sewing machine forced nostalgic and small-ly pleasing works.

But as I added to the work of others with thread, I made them something they weren't, or else amplified the obvious. Juliet Lewis is even more provocative when her stiletto heels cover stiletto feet, etched sharp in red. The furry creature that emerges from Sue Haven's Cemetery is given real hair -- well, actual thread at least -- and Mark Mander's armless sculpture is given -- obviously -- arms. Enhanced in Sue's case by adding a third dimension and a second sense, but depleted in Mark's, as the lack of arms is what makes the sculpture so striking. And, of course, the use of real string sewn over the photo of his real string is just a coincidence of materials, so I can't take credit for that. Besides, string and thread are not the same to pedants. Close enough?

So that is what the virtual does: approaches and exceeds but never attains the real. The virtual is better than real but it is never real. An old sorry argument overdiscussed decades ago, but as with most philosophy, until you experience it yourself it is nothing more than ideas. Which is why my next project will approach and exceed reality while never attaining it through projections. Useless but clean and calorie-free. I can't touch anything I put online, but I don't have to carry it with me when I move back from Fiji. The pacing of a website, the same superficial interaction and lack of real output, but tactile. A website in the real world, or a toaster that doesn't work and needs thousand-dollar equipment to (not) function properly. Of course, the broader ramifications of this (upcoming) work are spellbinding and reference French Philosophers/ Activists like Guy Debord while totally commenting on today's society.

Anyway, that'll be the fall collection. Next up are sewn shapes and perhaps some pillows. So as tactile craft is interwoven (tangled?) with abstract theory, we all know I am yet again trying to justify mediocre and amateur work with twisted and incoherenent theory. It might suck, but it sure isn't shallow.