Highly tactile as well as visual, the Embodied works are "constructed paintings": five diptychs in mixed media, incorporating sculptural techniques such as carving and mouldmaking, as well as fibre art devices of embroidery, felting, and unraveling. As a wound does, these pieces breach boundaries -- between painting and sculpture, between art and craft, between a canvas's self-contained surface and the physical world of the viewer. Each of the five works in the series alludes to a specific body sense. After all, it's through our physical senses that we engage with the world; when we're injured, our senses' ability to connect is impaired.

In Embodied 1 (Look), glittering gold-leafed proboscises sprout from the canvas surface and scuttle across the work's two panels. The textile construction of the proboscises can best be seen in detail. From a distance, Embodied 2 (Touch) is a splash of red -- an irregular, handfelted wool 'blanket' that hangs from the frame's top edge, reminding us of the sick bed, of a distant, downy terrain. Seen close up, the work's textile and embroidery details lure us with their laboured tactility.

The Embodied works came to me after a long period not making visual work. I'd been wounded myself, my dominant right wrist badly injured in a car accident. The injury came just as I was about to embark on the thesis work for my MFA. As I recovered from bad fractures and surgery, I knew that I had a body of work to make in order to complete my degree -- but more, that I had a body of work to make to reclaim my artistic practice.

Curiously, the idea for the Embodied works came full-blown one December morning. I knew exactly what the five pieces would be like. But I didn't have the slightest idea how to create most of them, nor was I sure I was physically up to the task of the obsessive, repetitive hand work that each Embodied seemed to require. Technical and physical means: those were my challenges.

Obviously, I found a way. Other artists were very generous with their expertise. I did lots of research and experimentation. And I knew that I was going to make the Embodied works, whatever they required in terms of skill development or physical recovery from my injuries. In a way, they were my occupational therapy. And I'm delighted that now I am not hampered by residues of my own injury.

Embodied 2 (Touch) was exhibited at the Common Thread: a biennial juried textile exhibition, September 17 - October 12, 1998, at the Sheridan College School of Craft and Design Gallery, Oakville, Canada.

Please contact me with any questions you might have about this series.

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