Courtney Childress

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

Touch and smell, color and sound join together in my stretched canvas sculptures. Fuzzy wool sprouting from the surface of unprimed canvas, stray marks from a handmade rainbow crayon loop and break. Certain, yet not straight grids are warp and weft. The flick of a wrist, a casual mark, laboriously applied to the surface via hundreds of stabs with a specialized tool, the work is the result of slow accumulation of effort. These hyper-tactile fiber pieces feel like spontaneous expressions, but are made by the time intensive process of needle felting, wet felting, weaving, dyeing and applying handmade yarn onto canvas. Using a barbed needle tool, I stab wool roving into unstretched, unprimed canvas, tangling the fibers so they bloom through the surface. I control density by layering and repetition, but the application is often done on the “wrong” side of the canvas, leaving an element of chance in the outcome. I felt thick patches of colorful wool with irregular edges, using hot water and soap to help agitate the fibers and tangle them together. I make layered crayon sculptures to mark on the surface of the canvases. The composition of forms feel incidental, like matter floating under the lens of a microscope, constantly reconfiguring. Swift like a drawing, a scribble, only the process is contemplative. My mind is set free, so the work is imbued with stray thoughts, anxieties, lulls and care. Every piece has elements of chance, I throw bits of fiber onto the canvas and apply...

Artwork