"Your Fragility....", 2010, mother's hair from gestation period embroidered on child's garment, velvet, 15 x 16".

Upon the occasion of my daughter's birth, I became almost agoraphobic, irrationally figuring that, if we never left the house, nothing bad could ever happen to her.

This piece, made within her first six months of life, is a simultaneous invocation for her safety, and a confession of my own newly hyperbolized emotional vulnerability. The hair used is that which was on my head during the time that I dreamt of her, during the time that I carried her. Like rings of a tree, a length of hair embodies the passage of time, carrying a discernible record of an organism's extreme life experiences.

The repetitive act of embroidery seems to be made for calming worry... trying to tie things down, sew them in, make them stay.
Embroidering with hair possesses its own unique intensity: each barely perceptible stitch is like a rosary bead, marking a tiny but ardent prayer whispered over and over.

(click any image to enlarge)

Oubliette II, 2008, human hair embroidery on found linen doily, hand-dyed velvet, convex glass, frame, 9 x 9", 13 x 13" framed.

The embroidered area itself is a little under 2 x 3 ".

This piece will be shipped tomorrow to the Packer/Schopf Gallery in Chicago.

In the near future, I will be creating large-scale photographs of this hair embroidery face-mounted to oval plexiglass, to be sold in limited editions of 10.