2016

Pencil Drawings

The Sum of What We Wear Series

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I was inspired to show the history of an inanimate object, one that is not usually reflected upon. In particular, clothing and what it experiences throughout its everyday life. Each piece of clothing we wear has a rich and fascinating history that we never consider. It starts from a plant in a field and often ends up forgotten, in the garbage or donated to a store when we are tired of it where another journey begins.

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There are three items of clothing that are depicted a shirt, cardigan, and jeans, each having five separate scenes of its everyday activities and experiences. There is no exact order to each set but the garments can be traced through their respective scenes of a typical week or day in its life. I did not repeat steps between different items of clothing to prevent repetition. In addition, they are my actual items of clothing to create a more personal narrative. The jeans start in a store, are folded, worn, later forgotten on ground and tossed in the garbage when they are done with. The shirt is produced in a sweat shop, sent to a laundromat to be cleaned, ironed, hung in a closet and later worn. A sweater starts in a used store, tossed in a washing machine, hung on a close line, worn, and dumped in a laundry basket. In particular, I find interest in this concept because there are a vast number of activities and processes clothing experiences which leaves an endless amount of images to be produced.

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In one of my previous projects, I mapped out the clothes I wore for a few weeks and wanted to expand my focus in this concept. After looking into laundry as a process, I was reminded of the ethical issues associated with wearing clothes that are made in places such as sweat shops as well as the sexism and racism to do with laundry as a domestic chore. For example, a Salvo Sports jersey tag once read “Give this jersey to your woman. It’s her job.” I was also confronted with ridiculous and demeaning images of ‘sexy’ woman hanging laundry with heels on. The only figures and clothes that are presented are feminine and in this way ask the viewer to question why this is.

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I worked with marker and pencil to create my work. Leaving out vast amounts of patterning, I put most of my efforts into shading to create interest in each piece and make the clothing seem present. I wanted these images to be simple and not overwhelm the viewer when they are all together but still be tangible. It is also expected to find colouring and ornate patterning in an image of items of clothing so I wanted to my piece to contrast from this. It is much easier to create realistic images of clothing with colour and I often do work with colour in some form so I set about to challenged myself in using black and white with shades in between. The grey scale also makes the images more somber. These images are meant to be neat and tidy to contrast the messy, disorganized pile that it will be presented in. I left most of the human figure, specifically the face, out of the images as I wanted to evoke a human quality to the items of clothing instead. When viewing an artwork, we often try to find human qualities that we can relate too. It also makes the images seem lonely and abandoned in some places.

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I hope viewers will begin to think about clothing in a new light with its own history and maybe even feel remorseful for what we put clothing through each day. I think my piece can be taken at its face value, a few items of clothing placed in their everyday life but I think the viewer could also begin to rethink our often consumeristic mind frame and consider the impact it has on our world.