A Support/Healer Class within a video game is defined as a role that assists in buffing allies, enhancing the attributes of their allies, and supporting/aiding an ally when need be. This is a class I tend to play not only in online video games, but also as a character role that I take on in my personality - leading into my artwork. Not only do I support my allies online, but as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, my artwork is also a resemblance of support for my fellow allies. This work is divided into two major areas: collaborative garments and intrapersonal garments. |
The first area of my work revolves around assisting and platforming LGBTQ+ models, public figures, and/or performers by creating restrictive and nonrestrictive sculptural garments. Utilizing mediums such as fibers, metals, plastics, and foams, these garments help reshape and transform the body. These pieces have individual statements and backstories that develop through the interaction and relationship built between the model, figures, and/or performer and I.
The second area of my work is created when I place myself as the model and creator, and I study the intrapersonal relationship of myself inside a video game vs. myself outside of the video game. This area of work continues to explore wearable forms and garments, but dives into more personal connection and relationship with online realms and how they can be brought into reality through a physical manifestation. My latest project studies a family living in the mid-late 19th century and how the women in the family transformed an old family heirloom into fashionable, wearable clothing for themselves. I continued this pattern by creating my own sculptural attire, with similar attributes to the heirloom, that voices a notion of gender assumption on garments by referencing patterns and explores armor and large cartoon-like proportion. My current work involves the creation of non-restrictive garments for drag performers who play with androgyny and resist the social norm through entertainment. By creating armor shapes with car vinyl and other materials, I am able to design and manufacture robust shapes on the body that resemble armor. This discusses the narrative that these performers along with other representative within the LGBTQ+ community are warriors and fight to survive. This not only alludes back to the video games I played as a child, but also spreads the positive nostalgia that lives with them. |