A hybrid of the words for “china” and “money,” chaney is the porcelain shards found in the soil after a hard rain and washed up on the beaches of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.
I found this shard in The Gut, the riverbed on my property that runs down the Blue Mountain out to the Salt River estuary.
Ceramics, broken in symbolic acts of destruction by slaves, is a symbol of colonial resistance.
I wonder if the tourists buying chaney repurposed into jewellery are aware of the sociopolitical postcolonial critique of colonization and slavery.
For now, I will keep collecting chaney until It is ready to find it’s way into my work….
I have quite a bit lined up for 2023 , including three solo shows, a return to Governors Island, Fiber Art’s Excellence in Fibers and the group show Dark Matter in LES. There is so much to look forward to in 2023.
My Emotional Baggage Carts were featured in New York Times article as one of the inventive examples of designers upcycling and turning FreshDirect plastic totes into trendy accessories and art.
ArtNet News even mentioned my Emotional Baggage Carts sculpture series, addressing the pressures of the pandemic that produced such a surplus of Fresh Direct delivery bags in the first place.
Bottle caps, neon yellow 550 paracord, 200′ neon yellow camo 850 paracord, hollow braided polyurethane rope, solar LED rope lights, recycled Fresh Direct bag and commercial fishing net, zip ties, gold spray paint on recovered shopping cart. Photo by April Tracey
Thank you Hoboken Girl for the shout out as one of the 23 Hoboken + Jersey City Women to Watch in 2023. It is an honor to be included amongst this cohort of diverse, extraordinary business owners and community leaders.
Forecast//Recast brings together artists and artworks that explore ideas of predicting, reshaping, and re-predicting — works that offer a glimpse of possible futures, reexamine historical narratives, shed light on needed social and ecological interventions, and bend inquiry towards new aims to reframe the way we view the world.
Highlighting fiber and textile-based materials and techniques, cross-disciplinary practices, experimental processes, and material innovation, this exhibition prompts a reshaping of the future with works that predict our current trajectories, cast a new gaze on the past, and revise what is to come.
