In 'Footstools and Vanity Benches" I am exploring both the intrinsic and fabricated aspects of femininity. I have selected some of the most "superficial" objects from a "minor" setting -- benches and footstools from the home -- as basic elements for sculpture. I have chosen cloth, historically stigmatized as linked to "secondary" arts: fashion, crafts and other "women's affairs," as a primary medium. Additionally, I incorporate store-bought materials including ribbons, trinkets, beads, Christmas tree ornaments, hair accessories, and other treasures of female childhood and adulthood. Fabric has meaning. Through the art-making process, fundamental female character has become visible.
I relish intertwining visual metaphors of art and verbal ones of language. One of my titles is a derivation of "Maya," a Hindu Goddess who personifies both the powers of material appearances, illusion, and transformation. The word glamour for another instance, was originally a Scottish corruption of the word grammar, which to the Scots had magical power -- so the glamorous is that which is magically articulated. Prettified can become petrified and so on. Furthermore, twists of language can generate insight into the paradoxical nature of what we deem "profound" or "superficial." It is frills that spawn lucid thought in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice:
With astonishment, Aschenbach noted that the boy possessed perfect beauty .. A complete purity of forms. The English sailor suit, with its braids, stitching and embroideries, its puffy sleeves narrowing at the ends and fitting snugly about the fine wrists of his still childish but slender hands gave the delicate figure something rich and luxurious ...
He followed Tadzio's beauty in the forming of his [Aschenbachs] little tract, a page and a half of choice prose which was soon to kindle the acclaim of many through its clarity, its poise and its vibrant emotional tension.
Fabric can be defined as both an inte
