Three Cloths, 2008floorcloth installation, variable size, painting/drawing, canvas, image transfer, acrylic paint, marker, chalk, video projection, ipod

swipe/drag image

Floorcloths, surfaced designed canvasses, traditionally used as floor coverings, reflect an ongoing attachment to the visual, particularly decorative domestic structures and imagery. This interest stems from the perpetual dialogue in the art world about alternate aesthetic practice and history, namely issues around feminism and the re-evaluation of what has been traditionally labeled women's work. I am making a series of floorcloths (domestic, functional objects) through a process of layering and melding, with paint and heat transferred imagery.

One of the most vivid references for the floorcloth imagery of this installation are the Dutch vanitas paintings of the 17th century. These paintings were an expression of the ephemeral nature of life and pleasure—a morality lesson. Flowers and flies populate my floorcloths as they did vanitas paintings. As much as the floorcloths refer to a history of painting they also negate that allusion by their functionality, impertinence and horizontal orientation. This is art to walk on. Even the viewing perspective creates a dizzying sense of vertigo and dictates a new way of looking.

Floorcloths have always been primarily about pretension. They were a poor man’s Persian carpet—thin, flat, paint taking the place of rich, warm tufted wool. They have the subversive power of a fake or a facsimile.

Quilts often utilize found fabric, worn with markings of use—a whole created from bits and pieces. It is an additive, layering process—sampling and piecing imbued with improvisational impulses and feedback. Likewise the sound and moving image, collaged digitally are gatherings of both seemingly disparate and consciously connected elements.

 

 

Three Cloths, 2008floorcloth installation, variable size, painting/drawing, canvas, image transfer, acrylic paint, marker, chalk, video projection, ipod

swipe/drag image

Floorcloths, surfaced designed canvasses, traditionally used as floor coverings, reflect an ongoing attachment to the visual, particularly decorative domestic structures and imagery. This interest stems from the perpetual dialogue in the art world about alternate aesthetic practice and history, namely issues around feminism and the re-evaluation of what has been traditionally labeled women's work. I am making a series of floorcloths (domestic, functional objects) through a process of layering and melding, with paint and heat transferred imagery.

One of the most vivid references for the floorcloth imagery of this installation are the Dutch vanitas paintings of the 17th century. These paintings were an expression of the ephemeral nature of life and pleasure—a morality lesson. Flowers and flies populate my floorcloths as they did vanitas paintings. As much as the floorcloths refer to a history of painting they also negate that allusion by their functionality, impertinence and horizontal orientation. This is art to walk on. Even the viewing perspective creates a dizzying sense of vertigo and dictates a new way of looking.

Floorcloths have always been primarily about pretension. They were a poor man’s Persian carpet—thin, flat, paint taking the place of rich, warm tufted wool. They have the subversive power of a fake or a facsimile.

Quilts often utilize found fabric, worn with markings of use—a whole created from bits and pieces. It is an additive, layering process—sampling and piecing imbued with improvisational impulses and feedback. Likewise the sound and moving image, collaged digitally are gatherings of both seemingly disparate and consciously connected elements.