When given the choice between hope and despair, I find hope in the ways that illness and injury can tweak perception creatively. My work keeps returning to the spinal columns of fish because they are the most common to me of skeletal structures belonging to living things.
My back is permanently damaged from living an incautious physical life (which includes a sometimes-punitive art practice). I lend my subjects the balance that I can't seem to find myself. In a spinal tiltimagined surrealistically, there's an element of escape that is still rooted in something very real.
This sculpture is constructed with macrame knots, fiber emballage, hand stitching, and welding. Its powder coated steel backing is stamped with my initials (JLH) and its year of completion (2022). Two steel loops for hanging are welded onto the backplate.
