The creation of this piece was a journey, as is the final form. When I began this sculpture, I planned to make an intuitive and formal exploratory piece out of the kozo paper. When I added in red thread, however, my mind became filled with questions I had not considered before. The red thread was my grandmother’s crochet thread that I had inherited after she passed. I realized that I could not use the thread and say that it had no associated context or concept in my art. It led me down a rabbit hole of questions and conversations that I am still wrestling with in my work today. For example, how does one work with reverence for the material’s innate memory and concept as well as with the technical aspects of manipulating it?
In the end, this piece is more about the process than the final product. Taken at face value, it becomes a tribute to my grandmother, which takes the viewer on a journey in the organic swirling nature of the form. Probing more deeply, it represents my wrestling with questions about the choice and use of materials and understanding that there is more to a material than meets the eye.
