Fashion(ing) Artifacts
For several decades, I have been collecting, fashioning, and preserving clay, cloth, and textile materials. I think of these pieces as artifacts, as they embody cultural and historical threads, intricately entwined with personal narratives and craftsmanship.
This studio collection references fashion concepts and intuitive aspects of making or remaking. In some instances, this process encourages me to step back and let an artifact or grouping of artifacts exist as is.
Select forms sit in dialogue with one another, allowing the surrounding space to develop its own resonance and topography. By pairing artifacts with texts from my studio library, these forms take on new life when viewed through the lens of a written passage or a book’s layout.
The highest level of expression is not to create something from nothing, but rather to nudge something that already exists so that the world shows up more vividly.
– Lee Ufan, South Korean minimalist painter and sculptor
Choosing to fashion in a way that slows the process and explores new relationships with materials holds real, enduring value. Multi-dimensional fashioning might weave in bold perspectives, minimal interventions, and critical thinking. Over time, a certain patina might also emerge without too much polishing or finesse.
I’ve always loved the idea of the mutability of things. . . . Nothing is forever. . . . There’s an inherent instability about how objects work in space.
— Edmund de Waal, contemporary artist, potter, and author
Our environs hold or present things in ways that might encourage openness and mutability. Thinking about materials in this broader context shapes how I view my own fashion(ing) sensibility. It welcomes poetic emptiness, deeper space, and, at times, greater curiosity about what is intrinsically fitting.
[ all images: Abigail Doan studio ]