text(iles)

If we look at our language surrounding clothing and cloth, we can find endless connections. The words ‘hearth’, ‘home’, and ‘clothes’ all have similar lingual roots because they help keep us warm and we inhabit them daily. One of my favorite connections is that the English word ‘text’ comes from the latin word for weaving, ‘texare’. The repetitive nature of writing and weaving are bound together in this root word; clothing and stories are intertwined in their simplest forms, connected to each other, but also bound to basic human interaction.

Our clothing is our second skin, and the patterns of wear left on clothing become stories, memories, and moments held close to our skin in the form of darned elbows and fraying patches. These marks and other memories are illustrated in Text(iles), which link storytelling and clothing by representing specific garments using handwritten text.

These drawings were included in my Artist Curated Book Display at the Portsmouth Public Library in November 2018.