Grace Fossett

The kitchen is my studio, laboratory, and larder. Home mirrors industry. Following, or retracing, the footsteps of my grandmothers and great grandmothers, I play with the secret and scientific arts of fermentation though bread, vegetation, and liquids that bubble and burp. I have learned to turn flour, salt, and water into living breathing flesh. We control how we treat material; we can make it come alive, but in this we have help. Sourdough starter and ginger bug have become my needy children and I chide myself when forgetting to feed and pet them. Watching Flour, a grouping of millions, become Dough, a one. Bread is a way to connect us all, a living flesh that can feed our own. I spend a day turning and pressing the dough feeling it stretch and grow with gluten and love. Maybe, I...am...this...bread?

We are tied to each other with ribbons of red and green satin. Blinded and crowned with bread. The dress is of an era past, but difficult to place in time. I think of lady pirates, concealing their sex - Victorian dress and the androgyny and garish flamboyance of it; altar boys and Napoleon Bonaparte in ruffed lace and French heels - magical garments of fairy tales. Fabric measures time, just as the words of a story create it. Material inquiries activate historical boundaries of imagination and labor between fine art and craft. Through the use of fiber, wood, bread, bacteria, ceramic, and found and altered objects - I surrender to mortality, and body.

My practice is what it is and I am who I am because of the way my parents raised me: with wood, water, wonder, dust, and love. I have a respect for things we dream of and concoct in our heads. My work entices through fictional narrative, actions and costume we inherently recognize – animate and inanimate, creating a mis-registration that thrusts both viewer and object into a realm of uncertainty. We are crowned with the flesh of a substance that sustains life: salt, flour, water, and a willingness to dream.

Dealing in dreams and histories, real or imagined, I am narrator, a spiraling storyteller, and subject. Tent, loaf, arch, truck, mask, boat, goggles, dog, dress, crown - as monikers for narrative, these forms suggest movement and the passage of time. They become the driving force of stories, multi-functional narratives to hold secrets that both shelter and shuttle you from place to place. The dog is the rudder or compass on this journey–trusted companion and confidant; in him you place your heart. Salt water and molasses in my veins from my salt coast Grandmother. Flour and vinegar from my heart land Grandmother. Sprinkle a dusting of flour over your mind and soul. Nothing can stick to you. Only the good stuff that really wants to.