Chelsea Swan

Womanhood/girlhood – Lived experience – textiles

I am trying to pind down more what it is that is at the center of my practice and I feel like I keep touching on these things.

Anyway, someone showed me how you can use clay to make a silicone mold and then poor resin in to make sculptures.

How cool would an army of women, or and army of me be. For now I just wanted to test and see if I can do it. I could por the resin in layer by layer and add objects (lost treasures) and embroideries, and weavings, and glitter, and drawings, and boobs, and printed fabrics, and photographs, to my see through women. It would be like a build up of history and experiences and connections and lived experiences.

Maybe I should look more at why I make so many hollow, identity less women. I remember walking around the portrait gallery in Edinburgh and thinking it would be more interesting to me if there was a painting of the room a person existed in, with all their things, their collections, or just a painting of the collections, the objects that mattered most to them. I am also really interested in fashion and the way people present themselves or how they want to be seen, or how they live their lives through clothes. I don’t think the actual person part, or individual part matters so much to me, we are all connected and experience things in much the same way and so much of the frustrations and experiences of being a woman are universal. By putting a face on it I take away the chance for others to relate and identify the experience as their own. Someone can look and see me through my experiences and see how it feels and say, yes I feel the same way, and feel seen.