Piecework

An art installation with abstract paintings on large vertical canvases with splashes of black, orange, yellow, and pink colors, displayed behind a rustic wooden table and a roll of paper with similar paint splatters on the floor.

Piecework, 2008.

Installation and performance, dimensions variable.

Drawing machine: Decomposed and dyed silk, thread, wire, reclaimed lumber, reclaimed steel, dulcimer tuning pegs, wax, vintage pullies, rope.

Drawings: ink, wine, shellac on mylar.

Art installation featuring a long horizontal artwork made of colorful sticks on a wooden structure, with abstract patterned panels on the left and a sign on the right in a gallery setting.

Close-up of an art installation featuring a large collection of colorful, bundled objects hanging on a rack, with a background of splattered black, gold, and pink paint on a white wall.

Piecework is an installation and drawing machine that interrogates the relationship between labor, commodity, and value. Drawing upon textile history and the symbolic framework of patchwork, the work pieces together histories of bias, exploitation, and systems of production. Thousands of hand-sewn vessels made from decomposed silk and thread are suspended within a frame, holding ink, shellac, and wine. As these liquids slowly seep and drip, they generate drawings resembling binary code, translating the accumulated labor of the hand into a mechanical language of marks.

Operating between craft and automation, Piecework transforms the labor-intensive act of making into a system that produces images independently of the maker. The installation questions how value is assigned within systems of production: Does it reside in the labor of the hand, the object produced, or the mechanisms that convert labor into commodity?