Nicole Havekost

Bobbins
mixed media: paper clay, sewing pattern paper, acrylic paint, cotton thread, ball point pen, found objects
12 x 3 x 4.5 in.

I am currently making three-dimensional figures that are doll-like in form. These stitched and painted bodies, with fragile limbs of sewing and cooking tools, began as an experiment with materials and found objects. The first doll was a gift I never intended to keep. She had me excited about the potential of the process; the process of making figures I had never seen but knew so well. I made another and then another, and somewhere along the way I started making myself. The figures I make feel like me. They are unseemly, disfigured, bloated and unmoored. These figures are allowed to be what I wish I were not.

I am often in conflict with my roles as a woman, wife and mother; my body is the place where this conflict takes place. There is an agency in these figures and their limbs of seam rippers, knitting needles and scissors. These tools are a means to their own repair. These sewing and cooking tools are, for me, deeply intertwined I the experience of my body and its functions. In the making of these bodies, I hope to come closer to understanding my own.

© Nicole Havekost