Artist’s statement:

I have always been interested in narrative storytelling through framed images. As a photographer, I work to freeze a moment in a frame; as a filmmaker I sequenced those moments in a series of moving frames. Bookmaking was a natural extension of these ideas for me and allowed me to draw further elements of my personal experience into the art process.

My interest in body/image/women’s shapes has come about because during the 1970s, from the ages of 13-18, I wore a brace (23 hours a day) for 6 years for spine curvature (Scoliosis). In 1984 I again found myself in a corset/brace for a herniated disk (made by the same man who made my brace so many years before—and who also made the buckle straps for my 2nd book). Through all of this, I developed a sensitivity to “correction” and the need to fit in. In my early books I used sheer materials (vellum and acetate), repeating text and pictures, layering and stripping away words and images. Visual and literal puns emerge, involving structure, apparent and concealed.

The stitched stories on these corsets are from a variety of sources. I have incorporated text from the behavioral manuals of various historical periods, which describe prescriptions of public and private deportment, as well as personal narratives of modern women who have lived with these physical constraints. These same texts and relationships inform my corset books as I create a resonance with the rules and perceptions, which have been confining and defining women’s postures.

The structural beauty of corsets provide the means of my artistic expression utilizing my knowledge of customs and my experience of their therapeutic importance. These projects express my feelings about with using voluntary “restraint” to comment on the involuntary restraint that I experienced. My books are a continuation of my expressions and pay homage to understructures, which have voluntarily or involuntarily supported and corrected women throughout history.

I feel that the definition of a “book” is really wide open. I believe it has something to do with layers/ “pages” in which a narrative unfolds…maybe even connected by a traditional “spine”–although in this case—the idea of a “spine” is something that is built into what a part of corseting is all about.

I realize that this kind of “slow” is not so popular these days of “immediate gratification.” However, for me, taking the time to slow down to untie all the ties and read all the text is part of the contemplation and therapy of the process; echoing what women have been experiencing for a century of dressing and undressing.