"Inside Me" at Craig Gallery in Dartmouth, NS

Over the span of 5 days I installed the "Inside Me" fabric installation at Craig Gallery at Alderney Landing.

Since I am currently working full time I could only work on it in the evenings, which I had never done for this project. In the past it took me about 1 1/2 days to set it up now I stretched it over the span of 5 evenings, which had the lovely aspect that the public was able to see the progress.

It is also the first time that I have installed it in a completely public space. It is the outer wall of the gallery, which is still within the Alderney Market building but it is freely accessible to the public while people move through the space on there way to work or home from the ferry.

Tomorrow the Saturday Farmers market will happen right in that space and people will move busily past the installation. Vendors will be face to face with the fabric bulging from the wall all day.

It's definitely an interesting experience. A mix between pride and excitement but also vulnerability. The work is not hidden in a gallery space that only gets viewed by a select few who don't feel intimidated by the gallery set up. It's out there to live and breath in everyone's daily environment. 

Day 1 - Piece 1 

Scott helped out the first couple of days with anything from holding the latter, handing me pins and just good old moral support. Best husband in the world! 

Day 2 - It is growing!

Day 4 - Almost done.

Day 5 - Paparazzi? ;) 

Close ups of the finished set up

The finished Installation. Feels good!


And here is the official Artist Statement:

{Inside Me

Making the surface transparent; breaking down the borders where the inside begins and the outside ends; pulling the inside out; letting the inside become the surface that inhabits the environment; these are considerations, processes and techniques by which I am trying to understand the entity that is me.

While gestures, expressions, rashes, hives and illness are common manifestations of the body’s complexity on the outside, I seek to imagine what happens beyond. Through my imagining, I come to myself. What if the internal patterns and textures are literally brought to the surface? What if they become part of the environment? Would I discover greater insight and understanding of my body and its intricacies? The interlace of systems, that I call “lacery”, delicately functions together and is so easily disrupted and turned against itself and its elements each to the other.  Each pattern I create is another layer that I extract from this lacery that is inspired by cellular and muscular structures, patterns of blood vessels, the nervous system, emotions, thoughts and feelings.

The “Inside Me” fabric installation brings the image of the body’s mystical interior to the public eye, it invades the public space. It asks the viewer to consider the consequences. What does it look like if our inside would become our living space. Would it be threatening?  Claustrophobic?  Spreading like a disease? Or would we feel liberated and see it growing like a beautiful plant? Would it be ornate and static or pulsing and alive?

“Inside Me” is constructed from fabric that is printed double sided with ballgrain plate lithography, a meticulous printmaking process that takes full body involvement.  Then each piece of fabric is sewn and stuffed into bulbous formations that get pinned together and stretched over shapes of chicken wire. Each time “Inside Me” is constructed it changes and adapts to the space and environment around it.