Skin, a piece I worked on, on and off, for nine years. It is a life size woman’s skin made from approximately 400,000 tiny glass beads and nylon thread; it hangs from the ceiling like a garment on molded acrylic shoulders. It was incredibly labour intensive to make as each bead could only be added one at a time.

The process by which the piece was constructed speaks to the labour and seeming invisibility of women’s work as well as the way in which bodies are built from conception right through life cell by cell. There is no head as this is not a portrait but much more of a kind of garment that perhaps the viewer could visualize being worn. The ‘shed’ skin has a reptilian reference that ties into ideas about Eve, the serpent and the awareness of nakedness that came with knowledge from the forbidden fruit, linking it to paradise and the garden which is how I see it as relating to my more recent flower based work.

Skin 2003-2012. 42 x 23 x 170 cm, approx. 400,000 glass beads, nylon thread, acrylic armature.

Photos: Steve Farmer, courtesy the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy Canadian Clay Clay & Glass Gallery.

Heart was made while I was working on the nine-year process of making Skin, I really wanted to make a smaller beaded piece that I could finish. I had used the heart as subject in earlier work, such as drawings, embroideries and crocheted multiples. The beads I chose were a shiny dark red and felt very different from the matte pink ones used for Skin. It is an object that fits nicely in the hand and I constructed the shelf to be a similar size. Heart is mounted on the wall at chest height to remind the viewer of their own heart.

Heart, 2008. 17 x 12 x 10 cm. Glass beads, nylon thread, magnet, steel shelf .

Photo : Anthony McLean courtesy La Guilde.