Interview on WMHT’s AHA!
A House for Arts
https://video.wmht.org/video/aha-817-lngllz/
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In my studio in the Hudson Valley of New York State, I create sewn three-dimensional fiber works, acrylic paintings, digital drawings, and collage. My current figurative paintings are based on family photographs that capture a sense of place and freeze a fleeting moment in time. I paint the faces and gestures of loved ones so that I can spend my time with them, whether they are in my daily life or departed from it. Some of my past paintings were of abstract worlds that resembled interior body spaces. I use the mark-making language and patterns that I developed in this work to bring layers of depth to my current work.
I sew fiber works from small pieces of silky fabric, fill them with polyfill, and gather them together in bunches of organic shapes. Then I mount the bunches on found crocheted doilies. They recall ovaries and cysts. This work grew out of embroideries that I made when sitting with my father at the end stages of his cancer. Rather than turning away from what was happening, I decided to examine it. The quiet, transportable work was ideal for travel to see him and quiet times with him. This work comments on on desire and repulsion, much like my older sculptural fabric work that was inspired by folkloric takes of mandrakes combined with vintage nightgowns, and science-fiction monstrous pink satin tentacles that grew out of conjoined girdles.
Emissaries from Corona is a series of acrylic paintings of creatures and stuffed animals. When faced with days that melded into one another, in Covid-19 lockdown at home with the demanding personalities and wants of my family, I made daily art-making a practice once again, to make space for myself. In the midst of global and personal anxiety, I reached for objects of comfort, my first friends, beloved instruments of storytelling. I mourned the loss of connection with friends as I watched my children struggle with it, as well as mourning the loss of my children’s childhood and that of all children growing up in a pandemic. In these paintings, we journey deep into the nostalgia of childhood. They each begin with a black circle—the black hole of self—all the same size and placement on a wood panel—and take us into the realm of memory, fantasy, the passage of time, and imagination.
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aliciamikles@gmail.com