Soul Skins
Soul Skins is an ongoing series of sculptures I have been creating for more than twenty years. The work comes from my exploration of my own and other women’s experiences with body image, vulnerability, identity, and the complicated relationship we have with our bodies.
Each Soul Skin tells the story of a woman’s journey within her own skin. I see the body as a beautiful and complex work of art, a place where our experiences, memories, emotions, and sense of self are held. Through these sculptures, I seek to transform the ways we see and understand our bodies, moving away from judgment and toward curiosity, acceptance, and beauty.
Every Soul Skin is created through a collaboration between the woman being cast and myself. I work closely with each woman to explore how she feels within her skin and to translate those sensations into the form, texture, lining, and adornment of the sculpture.
The materials chosen are often deeply personal. Women have requested everything from nails and sandpaper to fresh daisies and roses. Each material becomes a language of its own, expressing a sensation, memory, emotion, or experience that may be difficult to put into words.
Using latex, foam, fabric, and a range of organic and inorganic materials, I create sculptures that exist somewhere between body and object, vulnerability and strength, intimacy and transformation.
Ultimately, each Soul Skin is both a portrait and a vessel, a physical expression of a woman’s experience, and an invitation to see the body and the soul within it with new eyes.
