| “Drawing via embroidery, the works’ surface is created through a dance of repetitive notations, suggesting that a body’s labor isn’t separate from the product it generates but is, rather, another version of it.” |
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osh Blackwell, Plastic Basket (independent triangles), 2010. Plastic bag, yarn, 12 x 18 inches.
Courtesy of the artist.
Author: Josh Blackwell
Borrowing techniques from painting, drawing, and collage, my work derives from interests in modernism, tailoring, and the quotidian. In my most recent body of work, I collect semi-degraded plastic bags from city streets and sewed them shut with yarn, deliberately thwarting their function. Installed in groups or as discrete objects, in galleries or public spaces, these Plastic Baskets are simultaneously condemned and redeemed.
Ostensibly useless, plastic bags are the second most common form of litter in the world after cigarette butts. Self-effacing and indeterminate, the works conceal and reveal themselves as they hover, drift, or rest in space. The protean shapes suggest faces, animals, or clothing. Drawing via embroidery, the works’ surface is created through a dance of repetitive notations, suggesting that a body’s labor isn’t separate from the product it generates, but is rather, another version of it.
The legacies of geometric abstraction and minimalism are conflated with folk traditions and do-it-yourself craft projects. Contrasting “artificial” plastic with “natural” yarn, the work questions the economies of waste and necessity.
