Yoke Structures:

Forming the future by walking the path of the past

I would like to travel to Belfast and work with Waterfall Arts as I create a series of woven vessels that explore the idea of safety and refuge – a womb, our place of origination and development, floating in the ocean with the waves rocking the protective shell gently.

Belfast, Maine and the Mid-coast region of Maine is a place of origin for my family. My ancestors date back past 1762 in Deer Isle, Brooksville, Freedom and Belfast. And I realize that for me to write my own story, my story of origin, I might need to return to my ancestors’ walkways and learn their stories first. The weaving of these vessels in the Yoke Structure series will stand as the journal of this journey and may entice the viewer to consider their origins, ancestral and individual.

The Yoke Structure series of woven boats will be braided of seagrass, stitched and coiled around a bamboo armature. These vessels will create a space of nurturing. They will be shaped to fit the figure of a full-size woman tightly mirroring her hourglass figure and stitched inside of cloth, bunched and gathered. Referencing the universal voyage of life – birth, sex, and death these crafts will be tarred on the exterior with fragrant pine tar, an important maritime material. I may decide to make the vessels watertight, in preparation for a site-specific performance in the Belfast harbor, launching the vessels into the sea.

A residency at Waterfall Arts will offer me the opportunity to step out of my day-to-day world, focus on this project intensively, and meet and work with the Belfast community. The project of weaving such a vessel is daunting at the size of 69” x 24” x 24” or larger. I have successfully created vessels this large in the past but not using these techniques. Being on the coast of Maine will be essential to my ability to do the construction and integrate it with my family history of water travel. I wish to become part of the art-lively Belfast community, to intensely research my family ties to the area, and to add a new chapter to my life.

As I say in my artist statement: Many of us are raised with our families’ or societies’ ideals for us instead of our own. Our parents/teachers/spouses become mirrors for us to see our reflection in – but sometimes that reflection is closer to a fun-house mirror than reality. Do our appearances really tell the truth about ourselves? Do our work, life and families really illustrate who we as individuals are? Is there another story that we are living and not our own? I want to write my own story – my own good, bad and damn ugly story.