Knots
Jennifer Brandon

Interviewed by Kija Lucas

Where does this body of work stem from?

We connect to a favorite blanket, pillow, sweater, to our bed. They become a part of our emotional lives and put us at ease when we are distressed. I had been collecting materials and objects with associations to this connection, looking for evidence of their continual use: threadbare surfaces, stains, broken seams clumsily repaired.  By isolating the objects in the photograph, I hoped to expose, or perhaps evoke, an emotional state that might bring us to those objects in the first place.

I had accumulated of fabrics, threads, batting and other minutia associated with mending and repair, and began to imagine what kind of object I could create that might evoke an emotional situation.

Knots began with those simple materials—fabric and thread—but it was my own hand and action this time, tearing at fabric, piecing it clumsily back together, staining and damaging the surface of these odd little objects that could have been purged or cast aside.

Your work has moved from more recognizable found objects to made objects, why was that a necessary transition?

I’m not sure it’s a transition from one to the other as much as a navigation between the two. I’ve been preoccupied with things falling apart and getting put back together, and the metaphors associated, for some time. In pieces such as An Attenuate Object, the video Falling and the window installation Fallen for instance I had an overt hand in the making and unmaking of the objects. Knots was the first time, however, that the objects were rendered as photographs.

Why do you choose to show these as photographic images rather than sculptural pieces?

I’m interested in the transformational quality of the photograph, in the ability to take something negligible and give it significance, to upend its context and offer new associations. Of course, the photograph invites associations with time and experience, things that draw me to the objects and materials that I use.

What other projects are you working on and where do you go from here?

I’m working on a couple of things right now. Accumulations is a series of images that capture increasingly loose, ephemeral constructions; batting and string barely held together and playing against the frame of the photograph. The other, Studies, is a large series of small images that document the smallest bits of detritus, thread, notions and random bits and pieces that I draw ideas from for larger works.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.

Mercedes Dorame

Gaps exist in memory, history hangs by threads and anxiety about authenticity and value seeps through the cracks.  Through my work I seek to regenerate to connective tissue of personal and collective meaning to reconstruct a whole.

As part of a Native American tribe from Los Angeles that was once declared extinct by history books, I wade through the shifting aspects of ceremony, deciphering the fragmented pieces of my ancestry as a Gabrielino. Piecing together cultural tradition and re-examining personal and cultural artifacts I explore the intersections of experience and memory.

Cinnamon and ochre interchange, red yarn binds and supports as it does with ceremonial sage.Through the performative acts of arranging and combining I activate these objects with new growth creating contemporary ceremony.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.

Mercedes Dorame

Gaps exist in memory, history hangs by threads and anxiety about authenticity and value seeps through the cracks.  Through my work I seek to regenerate to connective tissue of personal and collective meaning to reconstruct a whole.

As part of a Native American tribe from Los Angeles that was once declared extinct by history books, I wade through the shifting aspects of ceremony, deciphering the fragmented pieces of my ancestry as a Gabrielino. Piecing together cultural tradition and re-examining personal and cultural artifacts I explore the intersections of experience and memory.

Cinnamon and ochre interchange, red yarn binds and supports as it does with ceremonial sage.Through the performative acts of arranging and combining I activate these objects with new growth creating contemporary ceremony.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.

Mercedes Dorame

Gaps exist in memory, history hangs by threads and anxiety about authenticity and value seeps through the cracks.  Through my work I seek to regenerate to connective tissue of personal and collective meaning to reconstruct a whole.

As part of a Native American tribe from Los Angeles that was once declared extinct by history books, I wade through the shifting aspects of ceremony, deciphering the fragmented pieces of my ancestry as a Gabrielino. Piecing together cultural tradition and re-examining personal and cultural artifacts I explore the intersections of experience and memory.

Cinnamon and ochre interchange, red yarn binds and supports as it does with ceremonial sage.Through the performative acts of arranging and combining I activate these objects with new growth creating contemporary ceremony.

by Dan Farnum

For many recent years the FBI has designated my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan as having the most violent crimes per capita in the country. Flint and Detroit are also frequently listed in the top ten. These photographs investigate the condition of cities and neighborhoods in Michigan after years of economic decomposition. This work documents the people who remain when others fled and the places they inhabit amidst a backdrop of mass exodus.

Primarily I focus on teenagers and young adults: The disenfranchised, the urban pioneers and the hipsters whose youthfulness contrasts the harsh condition of the places in which they are photographed. These pictures capture an approachability and vulnerability in people who are typically misunderstood. Surprising, they have an urge to interact with the camera.

This is an important and pivotal time in the state’s history due to the recent national focus on this area brought about by sky rocketing unemployment, controversial automotive bailouts, and continuing crime. My background as a former resident allows me to view Michigan with a level of intimacy and familiarity that more fully addresses the physical as well as the mental ramifications of living in such a challenging place.