Zoe Hillenmeyer

We spent more time in studio focusing on ways to take ideas, expand them intellectually, and then also expand them visually. I enjoy these excercises - though they leave me tired and ready for bed. My mind and thoughts keep centering around greenspace, the divide of public and private, death and life, fabrics and florals (relating to patterns in general: but especially those that deal with domesticity, or the feminine). The greenspace is a personal interest. I miss the greenspace of home, and here is seems there is none: but that is only an illusion. The greenspace is on the roofs, in the terraces, painted on the ceilings, stuck on their fabrics - it's everywhere, but everywhere private. At home, greenspace is public, public parks, trees, strips of grass, and gardens. I've always been fascinated by the public vs. the private, and so this dynamic is particuarly of interest. I've also found myself going back to fabrics time and again. The idea of our skin as bags, or silks that we are wrapped in, in connection to the ornate fabrics and fashions of Florence are interesting to me. The focus on the figure (nip, tuck, sew, stitch), and the focus on concealing (wearing a "coverup"), seem to mesh very seamlessly with the idea of our bodies as fabric bags that work to seperate us from our surroundings. I've started recognizing the "skins" that "seperate" and "contain" so many bodies or masses of 'stuffs.' For instance, the skin of pears, the skin of people, the skin that develops on milk when it is heated, the skin of berries, and then that of bags. Thinking about bags has gotten me to a thought circle about "paper or plastic" and the act of wrapping oneself up. The images of the renovation at Santa Croce link to these ideas. Paper or plastic seems to hone in back on the idea of greenspace or energy awareness. My ideas are clearly not concrete, but they are swirling, marbleing with one another and starting to sift into thoughts.