Post-conversation: Time to clean up

Post-conversation: Time to clean up (2019/2023) is an installation of handmade paper place settings created for use during conversations between the artist and various mentors.

Fabric scraps collected from years sewing garments and working as a seamstress were shredded to the smallest fiber size accessible, first through cutting the scraps by hand and subsequently by processing in a paper pulp beater for roughly eight hours. Handmade paper techniques were then used to pull sheets of new, composite fabric-papers in the style of single-use paper placemats. Further fabric-papers were massaged meticulously by hand to soften them until they possessed a similar feel to soft paper napkins.

Tea was brewed, pastries were set out and one by one professors were invited to sit down with the artist to chat about how she might move towards a more conceptual art practice. Despite combining a variety of textiles, the placemats and napkins had all turned out pink. Tracing all the labor that went into setting the table, it is inconclusive whether the crumbs and stains that remain led to anything more than another mess to clean up.


Post-conversation: Time to clean up
2019, documented 2023
Placemat and napkin of beaten fabric scraps, yarn, teacup and saucer

Exhibitions


2024
Reimagining Our World: Rejected Materials Reinvented, LexArt: Lexington Arts & Crafts Society (Lexington, MA), curated by Martha Heller and Adriana G. Prat for i3C Artists

2023
A Woman's Work is Never Done: Women in the Arts, Arthaus Gallery (Allston, MA), curated by Paige Moreau for Unbound Visual Arts