Candice Thompson

Project Statement: The weight of his suits, rubber-banded together and kept dry inside the black trash bag I improvised as a garment bag, crushed my arm as I stood waiting on a wet curb outside JFK. I clutched his suitcase in my other hand, which held the rest of his pilfered wardrobe. Tears streamed down my face that I was unable to wipe away. Having just returned home from my grandfather’s funeral, I had no idea why I had taken so many of his clothes or what I would do with them in my small apartment, where there was scant room for my own clothes. It was October 3, 2009. Eventually, I came to the idea of punching holes in the clothing and pressing the thousands of small circles into newly minted fabric buttons. This was the beginning of a process of material transformation that would ultimately lead to yet another metamorphosis - portraiture. I now find myself painting with these artifacts, recreating his image out of ineffable fragments.

This work explores the idea of resilience and reaction. What if the fragile becomes indestructible? I use fabric and fibers to make sculptures and installations which defy their natural characteristics and surroundings. I am interested in the unexpected chain of events that result from seeing something familiar in an altered state. Dale, Dale (Hit It, Hit It) was made without a formal pattern; I used the principles of hyperbolic crochet to guide me. Crochet has been a perfect way for me to present the contradiction of the hard, normally breakable piñata as a soft and durable symbol. Since the days of the Catholic conversion of the Mayan people, the seven points of the piñata have represented the Seven Deadly Sins, the stick as virtue, and the blindfold as faith while the sweets and coins imagined inside are the riches of heaven. I have chosen to use this metaphor as the context for a piñata that defies cracking. Piñatas are now almost solely used at parties and considered to be child’s play, but I found the religious symbolism to be a telling mirror of our current American society and political climate. A state of broken virtue, where blind faith and our worst vices remain intact and the reward we are all waiting for remains elusive.