Marking Time, 2022
Closed 4x6.5x2 inches. Open within enclosure: 4x13x7 inches Woven accordion book with custom-made enclosure. Handmade paper from cotton baby diapers, baby diapers, Tyvek, embroidery floss, graphite, gesso, fabric from baby clothes. Unique EditionRight before my 50th birthday, my mother gave me the cotton diapers she used on me as a baby. Bright white, heavily bleached cotton. Perfect for papermaking. As I cut each diaper into tiny squares, I considered the hours of labor my mother spent washing and cleaning them to maintain their whiteness.
The year I was born, 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote “The Manifesto for Maintenance Art”, a manifesto that celebrates the acts of care and maintenance as art. What have we as women inherited related to care and maintenance? What are the acts of care and maintenance needed but never seen? What do we bleach away? How might we as 21st century people consider the actions of care and maintenance in a different way? As you page through this book, I ask you to consider these questions.
