tenderhouse

Wood Point Art Projects, 2021

tender (adj.) 1) sensitive to touch or palpation; 2) delicate or soft in quality or tone; 3) [n.] an offer or proposal made for acceptance.

tenderhouse explores the relationship between text and textile. A small wooden structure with a 6x6’ footprint, the knotted fabric inside and out is an excerpt in Braille from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets ("the houses have all gone under the sea / the dancers have all gone under the hill"). Drawing on multiple meanings of the word ‘tender’, a visitor can run their hand over the Braille knots or see their tails moving in the wind outside. It is an embodied instance of language made tactile and animate, as well as blurring the boundary between shelter in a physical sense and the metaphorical shelter of words. Both narrative and physical shelter can be equally fragile and raise questions of intimacy, safety, and protection.

As textiles also form the first ‘house’ of the body, all fabric is second-hand and domestic in nature — sheets, pillowcases, curtains, cheesecloth, aprons. Each preserves a gesture of touch through material that was washed, worn, folded, slept on, or handled. This contact is continued with my repetitive action of tying knots, and the reading/contact with hands of visitors.

Funding from artsnb is gratefully acknowledged in the creation of this project. All photographs by John Haney at Wood Point Art Projects.