Modern Byzantium [2001]

mixed media [safety-pins]

I have always been preoccupied with materials and the exploratory potential they contain. As evidence: one day I was fiddling with safety-pins (a not altogether uncommon occurrence as I tend to fiddle with a great many things) in my studio in New York. A minor mechanical engineering feat in itself, the safety-pin is a rather ingenious device. More to the point, however, I wondered what could be fashioned with them given that all I knew about was their use in holding fabric together in an emergency, or for their quaintly outmoded use in the girding of diapers about baby loins.

Produced not far from the Fashion District, though certainly with no assumptions that this collection would ever be a hit during Fashion Week, Modern Byzantium represents the  journey a humble, utilitarian implement can produce. More so than anything, these pieces represent both conceptual potential and material examination. Never intending to construct pieces of a fashionable purpose, these works solidified my conviction that the making done with one’s hands is as equally important as the thinking done with one’s mind.

Selection from the collection appeared in Psy-geo-pro-flux, happening & fashion show, Providence RI (2005)