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Stepping Out of the Silent Pool (2019) 

"I experienced something painful, that hurt me, and now I want to put it behind me." 

 

Artist Caroline Rust has created the series of embellished shoe wall-hangings entitled “Stepping Out of the Silent Pool”. Similare to her series The Three Laces, these works of art employ fabric remnants she has thoughtfully extracted from garments in her wardrobe and vintage collection. In this series Rust blends her love of textiles, the joy she finds in tactile experiences, with painting to facilitate the observation of clothing features like lace edging, seams, straps, zippers, buttons, and other fasteners. Their smallness and familiarity make them seductive to the artist.

These works exhibit the way we dismantle life-experiences then piece them harmoniously back together again to reshape ourselves and histories, as we move closer to becoming. Furthermore, by marrying the gist of The Velveteen Rabbit with the basis of Punk fashion design, the artist takes injury, even acts of force (as with ripping apart garments) and mending (as with patching together torn garment details) to create “new and real ideals of beauty” laced with both softness and strength, thus exemplifying femininity’s ambiguity. What transcends is a broader awareness of the feminine experience through work that is both personal and universal.

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© 2023 by Caroline Rust. 

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