Shinique Smith’s structures, displayed in the Poetics of Dimension exhibit at the ICASFreawakened a desire in me I thought I could tame, keep dormant. She makes large, bulbous forms from bright fabric. If you can’t touch the art, you certainly can’t pinch its abstract little cheeks; my body swayed and undulated, seeking the rhythm of the work.
I want to make an evocative piece like that – garbage piled high, calling, calling. Our garbage loves us. It enters our lives, as packaging to be gleefully torn apart, wrapping our goods in a protective film. What has ever held space as well as a banana peel. Unfortunately, trash gets mishandled. Plastic was a terrible idea that’s been implemented poorly since its invention. Recycling is an illusion. Old clothing travels through the ocean to litter the beaches of Africa.
This series of busy books has allowed me to act on this dream while unAble to work at that scale. The books turn waste into fashion, offering interactive sensations and textures for the collector to explore. Busy Book Volume 3, the Flower Edition, was created during a period of prolonged illness, when I had to adapt my creative process to account for intense light sensitivity. The paths created by the stitching became my early morning meditation, and show stitch-by-stitch my journey through this pain.
