Mouth Plugs (2020-Current)
“The viewer thus ‘speaks’ the form in all its beauty and force, bridging distances at a cultural moment when proximity can be equally physical or virtual.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, we shifted from face-to-face interactions.
Touch was now potentially deadly; we watched people hug through plastic sheets. I started this series, Mouth Plugs during this time.
They are diaristic of my pandemic isolation and continue as the world slowly shifts to a new place. I have a need for the tactile, not just in touch, but the calming motion of the repetitious “stabbing” that needle felting demands.
Thoughts exist initially as abstractions, then visuals, long before I can give them words. Mouth Plugs manifest these thoughts, a way to remove them from my brain to an object. Inspirations are many: dreaming of waterfalls gushing from me, holding the moon in my mouth, and a dream of mountains escaping through my mouth. They are my emissions to the outer world.
