“The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor. If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.”
Ursula K. LeGuin
I am interested in the actualization of alternative pasts/presents/futures; abstract concepts that can be made physical; a dis-ordering of hierarchy and a movement towards the persistent power of relations: a set of determinations that play out intimately, creatively, and analytically
The grid is a contradictory format: one that simultaneously represents empirical order (graphs and maps), and a domestic visual language that rejects the simplification of relations (weaving). Both representations act as abstractions (or translations) in and out of the material world
Decluttering (domestic spaces and the mind) gets rid of things that can’t be controlled: objects, relationships, possibilities; I reference a disorganized interior space, non-linear organizations, and repetition as world-building
My process is open-ended to allow the unpredictable, undetermined possibilities of material to emerge
I work with intimate debris: collections of writing journals, book-binding cord, cat hair, molded natural inks forgotten on the counter, ceramics scraps, sticks gathered while listening to How to Survive the End of the World, old fingerpaintings made with friends, and a single photo of my great grandmother repeated throughout my work
To encounter alternative possibilities: we must imagine and seek out things that have been hidden–things that aren’t defined, and categorized–to sit in that unfamiliar tension
We must believe that alternative ways of being are not far away, that they are here: in our neighborhoods, in our words, in the very materials apart of us always
Our relationships accumulate predicaments and potentials: I must take notice, take note, and make alterations/determinations every day
“An approach—to anything whatsoever—must be carried out gradually and laboriously, that it must traverse even the very opposite of what is being approached.”
Clarice Lispector
billiejunebrand 