Photopolymer type and linocut images letterpress printed on handmade linen and wool paper. hand-knit lace cover decoration and hand-dyed, hand-knit enclosure 5.25x7 inches closed, 42x7 inches open. 8 pages. Edition of 30.
Artist Statement
Lace Stories is a collection of intertwining stories that began to take shape about a year ago, when I found out that the Susan Bates Company (CJ Bates and Son) was established just a few miles from my home, and that my step-grandmother had worked there until Coats and Clark bought out the company in the1980s. Through the story of my step-grandmother and of the factory itself, the book explores how mechanized labor redefines what is work and what is leisure. CJ Bates catered to a leisure market, and his factory’s success rested on the development of other industrialized fiber arts.
My step-grandmother, who worked at the Bates factory, knew nothing about knitting. The fact that she could spend twenty years inspecting tools she had no idea how to use emphasizes how removed industrial labor is from cottage industry, and how leisure artists who use these tools are also removed from their historic counterparts.
The representations of lace that appear throughout the book are my attempt to acknowledge how evolving technologies have changed the way we thing about production; nearly every piece of lace in the book began as a hand-knit item, but the modes of reproduction are very different.All images and text copyright the artist. All rights reserved.
