Touch bound, Bryden Experimental Space, 700 Bryden 2024

"Touch Bound"

Material: handmade rope from foraged dogbane, day lilies, and spider plants, rope made of teabags shared, hand-pounded copper lockets with enameled covers, Hand-soldered copper chain, Fired terracotta clay forms.

Terracotta teardrops sit at the base of each configuration - fingers shapes are pushed out of the clay skin -  the tear is holding itself. Above the earthen drops are hollow nets made of utility rope and or hand-twisted rope from locally collected fiber such as daylily leaves, dogbain, spider plant leaves, tea bags. Copper, a conduit metal, is incorporated into the rope, used to make a large scale jewelry chain, and the primary material used in the making of various lockets found within the rope tear drops. Some lockets are hand-hammered copper, some are copper enameled. Some hang in clusters and some hang singularly alone. The lockets are in the shape of leaves that have medicinal properties. Some text is visible on a few, the origins of which are partial transcriptions of medieval medicinal remedies.

Touch bound utilized the act of ropemaking as a foundation to explore relationships that are woven and interconnected. Rope is made by stripping a fiber from its source, twisting it onto and against itself and in that twist and combining, it is made strong and functional. This is the  foundation to talk about relationships, strength and weakness, being bonded together with nature and each other and the sadness when these bonds are disrupted.