Through media installation and objects, I’m addressing the precarious state of being out-of-body in order to consider how we manage physical and mental trauma. 

I first approached this subject in 2018 after my own experience with intensive trauma therapies. I began by developing video art designed for a single bedridden viewer. I was attempting to create work that could expand a state of meditative transport as a compliment to formal medical care. Fiber Chamber 1 is a tangible extension of that effort. 

In Fiber Chamber 1, a large felt textile drapes from the wall into the gallery, creating a small chamber from which to experience the work. The images and video you see here document a walk through the installation, showing the outside and then inside of the chamber. Viewers are encouraged to enter, sit, and allow their minds to drift as the video projection saturates the walls, floor, and fibers, creating a surreal intersection of surfaces and light. The textile is comprised of wet felted wool and silk. Magnets are felted into the top and bottom edges securing the textile to the wall and floor. 

The video content for the installation was produced in the same manner as the video for the Waves series. Since 2015 I have been experimenting with the real-space simulation of computer-generated special effects using handwoven textiles I create with mirrored mylar. All video is shot while I physically manipulate the woven mylar draped on a green grape arbor wet with dew and blanketed with sunlight. Slow-motion video of the textile in real-space becomes a skewed pixel matrix that resembles what I imagine to be the warped interior of a disco ball Tardis, while the sound is simply the slowed buzz of the arbor.

I don’t intend for a clear narrative to be perceived, though imagery of grapes rotting on the vine and fragmented trees may evoke a sense of beautiful decay. The visual oscillates between tangible representation and abstraction in an effort to reassure someone as they lean in to the experience of the installation. Though the exterior surfaces are beguiling to regard, the important space is the underside. At a time of perpetual shared trauma, I offer this work as a space for healing, rest and beguiling bliss.