Float

Float: any portion of a warp or weft element that extends unbound over two or more units of the opposite set on either face of a fabric. —Irene Emery, The Primary Structures of Fabrics

For twelve years, artists Denise Bookwalter and Lee Running have built a collaborative practice making artists’ books, textiles, garments, and prints. In Float, they continue their work with textile objects, exploring fabric as subject and medium. Clothing retains the story of the wearer. The works on paper and leather were developed before and after their artists’ book Fashioning. The series is made from excavated, dissected, and reconstructed clothing that captures the evidence of the hands and processes that made it, while also referencing the bodies that wore it. Floating sections of garments on top of each other and capturing their impression directly in paper, on copper etching plates, and in gold ink reveals their structure and unbinds them from their original form. The prints are evidence of the empathy found in the narratives of making and wearing.