Residency project at Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans, 2022
Incarceration: Isolated Objects
My current work in process explores the history of The Ohio State Reformatory located in Mansfield, Ohio. Built with prison labor, the massive penitentiary opened in 1896 with a focus on rehabilitation, religion, and trade skills training programs. By 1960, policies had changed and the aging Gothic/Romanesque facility had become a densely populated maximum-security prison. Conditions had drastically deteriorated over the years and in 1980 inmates filed a class action lawsuit against the State of Ohio. In 1990, a federal court order permanently closed The Ohio State Reformatory due to dangerous overcrowding and inhumane conditions. Eventually the prison re-opened for public tours and the facility is now included on the National Register of Historic Places.
My photographs center on the isolated objects that remain on-site. The photographed objects include a variety of damaged chairs; a school desk; a battered suitcase; a rusted metal locker in the infirmary; the mantle from warden’s parlor now outfitted with plastic flowers. Each mundane object possesses its own history that seems to bear witness to the life of an incarcerated individual while also reflecting on the larger history of incarceration in the United States. Utilizing a working process that is similar to previous projects, I translate photographs into large digitally woven images. I work with each image to create a stark composition that enhances the solitary nature of each individual object. I rework the photographic weavings via hand dyeing, sewing, cutting, collage and unravelling the threads that comprise the image.
Sleep, 2022
Deconstructed woven photograph
Untitled, 2022
Object made from rags and string on cinderblock
Less Than, 2022
Woven photograph, hand-dyed and collaged
Flashback, 2022
Deconstructed woven photograph, collaged and hand-dyed, 58”x88
Less Than, 2022
Woven photograph, hand-dyed and collaged, 48”x90”
Sleep, 2022
Deconstructed woven photograph with object, 47”x56”
Archipelago, 2021
Deconstructed woven photograph, cut and dyed, 56”x48”
Reform and Educate, 2021
Deconstructed woven photograph, 60” x 53”
Ohio Arts Council, Riffe Gallery, 2021
Installation view
The Warden's Flowers, 2023
Deconstructed woven photograph with stitched diagram, 16”x26”
Mending, 2022
Deconstructed photographic weaving, hand-cut and dyed, mended. 58”x46”
Mending (detail), 2022
Detail of hand-sewn mending.