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I think about
the ways we occupy or encase our bodies: shrouds and wrappings, slipcovers
and casings, lovers, children, shelters, clothing, dreams.
I imagine
our bones, each bone encased in a custom fitted covering, precisely shaped
and minutely fastened. I imagine these casings without the bones.
I am making these casings, slipcovering every bone in the human body.
I am sewing custom fitted casings of old linen, making rigid cases of
gauze and plaster, then using these gauze cases to cast the bones in salt.
I’m a topologist, investigating a process of careful, but ultimately
failed, translation. I’m an archeologist, cataloging relics of loss
and longing:
• The linen casings, each of which has its own pattern, are shaped
and tailored with hand-made cording and a loop for hanging. They are by
turns pathetic and cheerful in their collapse.
• The salt bones are dense and inert, commonplace and
precious at once, a hard distillation of the moisture which was there.
• The gauze cases, discolored from the process of molding,
carry the history of the absent bones. They are protective containers
for the salt casts and now-valued objects in their own right.
• The materials, linen and salt, are rich with references
to tending and domesticity, preservation and desiccation, ubiquity and
scarcity.
These are visceral objects without the viscera—exquisitely crafted,
dry and empty, both tenacious and futile in their failure to preserve
the thing itself.
More details about my process and my materials and project images are
at http://www.culturalterrain.com/boneproject.html/
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