7’ h x 6’ in diameter
2004
Vandykes, paper, thread drawings, fabric, a song.

I have always seen skirts as places to hide rather than objects to wear. To me they evoke motherhood, where to play, hide and seek and peek-a-boo. Skirts are dwellings for the living, tepees for our imagination to inhabit. Human nature steps in them stripped naked, laying bare our contradictions, our loneliness, our miseries and crimes, particularly those committed by our indifference to the pain of others. My skirts have faces peering outwards, with youthful hope, but also inwards, introspectively, particularly as they age. The outside of some of my skirts, on the other hand, reveals the sunny side of ourselves, the colorful, hopeful side of our natures. Others, however, reflect off the personal and social tragedies from which the skirts are meant to shelter us. I dwell on the texture of skirts because life itself is made up of stitches and patches, sewn up with fragments of memory and imagination. This is a show about three attitudes toward the world that we associate with aging: innocence (childhood), questioning (adolescence), and experience (adulthood). This is not a story with happy resolutions. Each age is rent by pairs of opposites: outside and inside; tragedy and hope; empowerment and powerlessness; community and loneliness.