The Sleepers Series

I sleep and I dream, I dream and I wonder: is this not also reality? The Sleepers Series uses the language of sleep to explore ideas of personal identity, relationships, and security.

Acknowledging the processes used to create The Sleepers Series is essential in understanding the evolution and meaning behind the work.

Each of the Sleepers started as a digital collage. In several instances, I used my own image alongside those of my idols. I loved imagining being close to my idols, or using that time to remember and safely explore past relationships, or taking time to see myself as I’d like and with all the good qualities of my idols. These ideas and more were explored. Our bodies were dismembered and remade together.

The collages were projected and translated into life-sized linear drawings, departing drastically from their original forms and most figurative recognizability. New shapes were created during this drawing process. Overlapping lines formed shapes that I filled with materials and colors, helping to describe the volume of new bodies I was discovery or morphing within the drawing.

As I introduced more abstraction and mark-making into the work, I felt I was more accurately describing the complexity of the relationships I continued to imagine between any figures. After a long process of visually defining the figures and much of the environment I had come to imagine, I thought I had finished. Instead, I began covering the artworks. It was an instinct I didn’t understand, and a big risk.  It started as a block or two of color covering a few body parts, but it continued and spread. The urge evolved and I found myself wanting to ‘protect’ the bodies I had created, using these blocks.

I wanted to protect the figures, and I wanted to communicate care and respect for the intimate moments they were having. I realized I kept thinking of quilts. I admire my quilting friends and the care and love that they put into making quilts for their loved ones. I wanted to make quilts for my found bodies, and wrap them safely in them as they lived out their lives within these artworks.

I covered the figures with an array of materials and colors, wrapping them in colorful blankets of marks and pastels and paints and my own bedding. I found myself putting them to bed. Bed became a safe place for them. They looked to me like they were sleeping. They became my sleepers, and I was their guardian. Suddenly all the diverse materials and marks and processes used to find these forms made more sense—it was as if I was looking into a dream world. The language was familiar: thoughts, in dreams, come from so many directions, and come together more freely than my waking mind typically allows. In dreams, I see so many things that I don’t usually let myself see.

The complex sensual language of The Sleepers allowed me to explore, in a safe place, a variety of intimate relationships. The final form of the work was unknowable throughout the making process, and, much like a dream, created for me an unrepeatable and invaluable experience.