Reborn Body (Pregnancy) Series - Fall 2014

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Pregnancy: a time in between. A time of infinite potential, wonder, power and strangeness.

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The experience of having a baby is unique to each woman and is an entirely personal experience yet this time is also layered with old wives tales, generalizations and idealizations that all have seeds of truth but threaten to limit and pigeon hole this most awesome of experiences.

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This work seeks to explore the complicated array of emotions and physicality of this time including a true sense of alien-ness within ones own body, loosing ones self to this transformation and the loving and natural connection a mother shares with her unborn child from the moment she knows she is carrying a new life inside her.

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The Reborn Body series is an exploration into the honest complexities of this time in a woman’s life, within the privacy of her body, in all of its ugliness, beauty and natural wonder.

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Potential / Perfection - Collaborative work by Megan Skyvington and Tara Lee Towers - Summer 2013

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A reflection on the changing expectations and roles of twenty-somethings.

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In a period of your life when every option seems possible, and your world feels ready to erupt in a landslide of realized hopes and dreams, you suddenly understand that you have reached a pinnacle moment in growth and personal development. Is it time to get married? To change jobs? Return to school, have a baby, adopt another fur baby? Or maybe go crashing head first into the shocking realization that you are the next cat lady to be featured on Hoarders? This promising time is filled with terror and excitement because everything is about to change and we aren’t quite sure if we're ready to grow up yet. The form of an egg exists as a sphere of perfection and limitless potential. The wax protects and preserves. The cats are not only a personal shield and a comfort but a symbol of fear of getting lost in one’s private world. Who are we becoming, and is it time to hide or to embrace this next stage of life?

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Make Up Monsters - Winter 2012

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The shade of lipstick, the layer of blush, the crust of mascara. The dresses and pants and jackets; the use of each is one of many choices we make everyday to build our public selves. What fuels these choices? What is the industry that creates what we see and how dows does it impact what we use to build and identify ourselves everyday? Editorials in magazines, advertisements, fashion weeks and celebrities all contributing to a skewed image of beauty that continues to impact the female perception of the self.

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If I could break one rule it would be to reveal the troubled underbelly of the world of beauty and acknowledge its unbelievable influence. Using forms derived from fashion blogs, magazines and popular media, these works are both vibrant and troubled, mimicking what we are inundated with everyday. This revelation is not with the intent of placeing blame but rather to acknowledge an inescapable impact. Troubled or not, we reveal who we are through what we adorn ourselves with. Understanding the private landscape of the self begins when we first understand our choices and their origin.

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"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

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Curatorial Statement, Leap Year, Presented by Woman King Collective - Winter 2012

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What would you do if only once every four years you could break any rule for just one day alone?

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Leap Year was a series of community driven craft, art and design events that asked this one simple question. The show was hosted at the department (www.thedepartment.ca) located at 1389 Dundas Street West in Toronto, Ontario. The show was opened to the public on Monday February 27th and ran until Saturday March 10th with an opening reception on Wednesday February 29th, 2012.

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Leap Year involved not only a group show but also a related panel discussion on Saturday, March 3rd. The focus was on handmade theme driven work that asks questions and invited open discussion in a community driven environment, showcasing emerging work and confronting the implications of its making.

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Featuring the work of Canadian Artists and Designers including Erin McCutcheon, Marianne Jette, Ilana Van Zyl, Alexa Tamar Smith, Marta Chudolinska and the Artists of Woman King Collective. This exciting series of events was an investigation of multidisciplinary work that interrogated what it is to break the rules if the chance was given to do this only on the four year event of a leap year, happening on the illusive date of February 29th. Based on the long forgotten Irish tradition that allowed women the chance to propose to their beloved only once every four years. This practice was an act that represented an extreme bending of the rules and testing the lines of traditional gender roles. Leap Year will ask the question: What would you do if only once every four years you could break any rule for just one day?

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Worries Translated - Makeup Masks - Summer 2011

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Navigating the vulnerable layer between public and private face this work boils with the anxiety that exists just below the surface, just slightly beyond the gaze.

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Thick layers of material built out of and resembling makeup act as both shield and mask. At times this layer protects and hides but ultimately reveals the fears of the bearer as the surface is torn open to reveal a tumultuous interior. Part critique of the beauty industry, part personal dialogue the masks created for this collection reveal the private building process between ourselves and the outside world that so often takes the form of this seasons hottest colours and must have shades.

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Perfect Imperfections - Spring 2011

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“You'’d be a pretty girl if it weren’t for that.”

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The body is a place of private history only ever known to the individual. My recent work deals with areas of the body that harbor a dark past earned through public stigma. As a reaction to this, the work seeks both to reveal this private dialogue with the body and to subvert the negative history through transformation. These areas of skin become fantastic wearable objects that simultaneously encumber the wearer while also shielding them from prying eyes. Each object highlights and reveals the area of interrogation, making what was once s point of shame now a focal point that even the bearer cannot deny; the impulse to cover up now being undermined.

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The process of making this work is seated in a desire for control and catharsis, being denied both through biological fluke and public judgment. Each step was carefully and specifically planned then executed, from the hand sewn wire mesh understructures to the hand-beaten paper that was chosen to mimic the imperfect skin surfaces. Using myself and other women as subjects the end result is not an angry reaction but something still forceful. This is shared with a quiet stillness evident in the final documentation where each women wears the object that was made with her in mind. Once object and body have been joined the piece exists and the unhappy cycle can find rest.