Tattooing Silk
This white silk wedding dress, which I found in a cluttered Portland flea market in December 2016, and which my husband bought for me as a Christmas gift, is my substitute skin, my lady-drag, my canvas. Each day, I allow an image to come to me, and then I embroider it, tattooing it into the silk. The needle makes a popping, rushing sound, coming through the fabric, as the image changes itself into shape. Then I put the dress on, and make some photographs.
I change the dress.
The dress changes me.
The camera witnesses the changes.
I write that day’s work.
I change the dress.
The dress changes me.
The camera witnesses the changes.
I write that day’s work.
Big Business
Have you ever tried putting on a wedding dress every day for three months? Have you ever thought of modifying its pristine white with whatever images and stories arise from your dreams and wanderings? I haven’t, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a big business schlepping that whole shebang with me weekly to the castle, the convent, the center for kids-who-might-go-to-jail, all the places I visit regularly, as an expressive arts therapist in training. It’s going to be a big business bringing the dress to Hopi and Dineh places, to Switzerland, and wherever else life takes me, in these three months. The garment itself is not, by standards of the form, a Big Dress, but my commitment to showing up for this project is Big Business, for sure.
Work on Myself
My mother asks me, In what sense can you say that this dress business has anything to do with psychology?
At some earlier time, this question might have sent me off into a defensive spiral, but in this moment, I can tell she’s asking earnestly, and I know this is a point I need to address. Well, I start, For one thing, this has been a one-hundred-and-eight-day commitment to daily creative practice – something I haven’t had in years.
The White Dress Project has made me work in a variety of interconnected media – embroidery, photography, writing, movement – while honing my attunement to the world, through scouting for motifs to stitch, photo locations, improvised tripods, and specific qualities of light. I have had to agree to be seen, in a garment that feels part priestly vestment, part performer’s costume, and part nuptial drag.
This whole process has been a ritual of remarrying myself, renewing the vows I keep to a primary practice of self-knowledge and self-compassion. The wedding dress has become a kind of initiatory garment, facilitating transition and growth. The one hundred and eight days of this project have been a time of allowing and investigating deep changes in my life. Some of what's arisen, I wouldn't have known how to be with, without the steady container of the dress. I tell my mother, I have a friend who isn’t exactly my lover, and isn’t exactly not-my-lover, either. Also, there’s a lot about my marriage that needs to be worked through. It’s taken a lot of presence and honesty to be with these things, without secrets, and with as few delusions as I can manage. The basic nakedness of the dress, the need, day after day, to strip down into it, has helped me to renegotiate a new relationship with embodied sexuality, different from anything I’ve known before.
Unexpectedly, mercifully, I can see understanding and relief fill my mother’s eyes. Oh, she says, You mean this whole thing has been primarily work on yourself?
Yes! Yes, I say. That's right. My work as a therapist has to be grounded in attending to my own clear connection with What Is. Without this foundation, my Doing Things for Other People becomes a fix-it fool’s errand. What I am attempting now, I say, is to bring together everything I know from being an artist, plus all my years of meditation, plus the chaplaincy work, storytelling, and teaching. I am attempting to enter my life fully, to become what I have always been, so that I can catalyze this process in others.
We stand quietly together for a few more moments, as the near shore of Lake Geneva glows vibrant yellow-green in the day's last rays of sunshine. We have both risked intimacy here, and through this courage, found new ground together.
At some earlier time, this question might have sent me off into a defensive spiral, but in this moment, I can tell she’s asking earnestly, and I know this is a point I need to address. Well, I start, For one thing, this has been a one-hundred-and-eight-day commitment to daily creative practice – something I haven’t had in years.
The White Dress Project has made me work in a variety of interconnected media – embroidery, photography, writing, movement – while honing my attunement to the world, through scouting for motifs to stitch, photo locations, improvised tripods, and specific qualities of light. I have had to agree to be seen, in a garment that feels part priestly vestment, part performer’s costume, and part nuptial drag.
This whole process has been a ritual of remarrying myself, renewing the vows I keep to a primary practice of self-knowledge and self-compassion. The wedding dress has become a kind of initiatory garment, facilitating transition and growth. The one hundred and eight days of this project have been a time of allowing and investigating deep changes in my life. Some of what's arisen, I wouldn't have known how to be with, without the steady container of the dress. I tell my mother, I have a friend who isn’t exactly my lover, and isn’t exactly not-my-lover, either. Also, there’s a lot about my marriage that needs to be worked through. It’s taken a lot of presence and honesty to be with these things, without secrets, and with as few delusions as I can manage. The basic nakedness of the dress, the need, day after day, to strip down into it, has helped me to renegotiate a new relationship with embodied sexuality, different from anything I’ve known before.
Unexpectedly, mercifully, I can see understanding and relief fill my mother’s eyes. Oh, she says, You mean this whole thing has been primarily work on yourself?
Yes! Yes, I say. That's right. My work as a therapist has to be grounded in attending to my own clear connection with What Is. Without this foundation, my Doing Things for Other People becomes a fix-it fool’s errand. What I am attempting now, I say, is to bring together everything I know from being an artist, plus all my years of meditation, plus the chaplaincy work, storytelling, and teaching. I am attempting to enter my life fully, to become what I have always been, so that I can catalyze this process in others.
We stand quietly together for a few more moments, as the near shore of Lake Geneva glows vibrant yellow-green in the day's last rays of sunshine. We have both risked intimacy here, and through this courage, found new ground together.