Held-Bound Collage

Women have always clothed the body; weaving the cloth, cutting and sewing it into patterns that covered, protected and revealed. This work re-members that intimate connection, creating new patterns and and imagined psychological states. The cloth holds the residue, smell, fragility; the memory of its life and purpose. Thread stitches together the disparate parts; clothing the dialogue of emotional experience. This work is drawn from articles taken from lifetimes of washing, mending and wearing. Mounted on the back side of the stretched canvas, the pieces reveal what is generally hidden against the wall, denying the front with a tangle of knots and thread. Fabric, pigment, wax and ephemera are woven together to re-assemble a memory of the body. Trina Perry Carlson is an artist, based in Seattle.