I just got some stretchy thread. It’s new to me. I thought it would be a good sculptural tool. It is.
The beauty of it is all in the building. Sew one line of it; nothing much happens. Add another line in parallel, you’ve got your first little gritty bit of tension and some puckers happen. Another line and things start to get vibrant because, at three, the lines form a sovereign entity. It’s the magic number. They’re a thing.
Begin to move in curves and the accumulating tension starts to force the formations of depth and structure. All from the same stuff that was used in those ubiquitous 70’s sundresses. It’s mildly intoxicating.
This aggregation of form must be like the slow building of a snail shell. The work is in just adding to what’s there: starting at that one spot where the growth left off, working your way around but always spiraling outward, always adding on to — each movement contributing to something larger. Aggregations.
“It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something.” — Jasper Johns
But that something can’t just be any thing. These aren’t “just” sculptures or academic exercises, they are clothes. Sculptures with a day job. How do the textures and forms want to become part of an object that someone chooses to wear? How do they relate to the body? How do they fit? How are they compelling as an object in use in the real (even if aspirational) world? How is this a good snail shell? This is my job within a job, to build sculptures that you can wear. I live, literally, every day, in that tension between form and function.