I AM A WEAVER

To move different can make us think and feel different. Using the back-strap loom, I extend my body through material- tool - collaborative being that connects me to site. I  listen to its embedded and embodied knowledge, which encompasses art, craft, pedagogy and translation. I weave open works that engage sensation and materiality, memory and poetry.


I situate my work within proprioception / affordances / translation and come to them often as I weave:

My work is an affective and synthetic investigation of body - object - site. The impetus of my artistic practice can be understood through the proprioceptive system which is the body’s internal sense of location. It arises through internal or external stimulus regarding pressure, balance and movement and alongside our other senses allows us to be aware of our location. How does the body feel when it encounters another person? How does the body learn the limitations of materials and objects? How does it locate itself in a landscape? How does it perceive its boundaries within a given context? How does it organize information to articulate and or remain still?Weaving is a tool for creating both material and metaphor. The decision to use the back-strap loom as a main medium comes as a way to break the rigid dichotomy of mind - body and connect tool, body, and site. In this way of weaving the tension of the warp is created by strapping myself to a surrounding architecture. Each weave is intimately related to the body it harnesses: its warp is the width of my hips, its length mirrors my height, its designs are spaced by the threads I can hold in my hand and determined by the tension I feel on the tip of my finger while I feed it. Once the fabric is pulled off the loom its affordances shift. It can fold and wrap, protect and reveal. It carries memory through touch, a proximity sense. I choose to use materials that reveal vestiges of bodies that were once there. I question how our individual body and collective body identifies, and remembers others. This shift of scale from investigating the interior and personal to the exterior and political is also addressed sensorially. Sound, a distance sense, has allowed me to explore expansion through connection and dissonance. I am interested in the comfort and piercing sensations of vibration. Guatemala and its history are complex and tangled. The experience of violence is shared within a culture of uncertainty, fear and silence built on corrupt and abusive systems recreating themselves blindly. However, phantom limbs and grief insist on causing pain until our body, not our mind, recognizes the potency of absence.I am interested in creating a reflective counter narrative where we pay close attention to our bodies. By learning how our bodies interpret, act and react in charged spaces perhaps there is an opening to transform the way we inhabit, body and space, so they can be touched and relieved.

PROPRIOCEPTION: is the sensory system that locates your body in space through pressure in the muscles, tendons and joints. I use the back- strap loom as a tool for proprioception that connects my body to place.

AFFORDANCES: are a set of relationships determined by the material and physical characteristics of things. I use affordances to read spaces and bodies, and how they relate.  It is a strategy for observation and play as well as to understand presence and absence of bodies.

TRANSLATION: is the proprioception of words. It articulates the relationship between language and objects. I use translation to understand how language is connected to power. I use poetry as a tool for translation.