I see prestige as a velvet-lined room filled with cigar smoke and old white men.  A concept embedded within nostalgia, something that my predecessors have pursued and achieved through good, hard, and honest work.  It is a type of honor gained through completing actions in the most pure or difficult ways possible.  This conceptualization has managed to saturate and motivate too many of my decision-making processes. I have sought it out in order to assert myself as a member of society—something that I feel I lack as a woman, artist, introvert, Midwesterner, or student within a rigorous academic institution.  However, in looking to ascend my own ladder of achievement, I end up simultaneously pushing myself down.  Seemingly absurd and useless knitted objects in my work serve to expose the absurdity of my own decision-making, but also question why we code and value certain objects different than others.

Special thanks to Professor Sanford Mirling, Rebecca Gooch, the Studio Art department, friends and and family for all their help and support in completing this project.

Heptathlon (2012)

Sod, mixed media, yarn

Thesis

Desk, mixed media, yarn

Cameron Mercer
Researcher

Ray Coish
Sponsor and Professor of Geology

Hannah Waite
Researcher

Peter Hamlin
Sponsor & Christian A. Johnson Professor of Music

Derek Matus
Researcher

Emmie Donadio
Sponsor & Chief Curator for the Middlebury College Museum of Art