Coat of Anger

“When Covid hit, I had a well-edited house and an identity that was still in flux. With a background in clothing design and a lack of supplies, I purged my closet—tearing things apart—searching for what felt like home in a claustrophobic world. Old clothes, chairs, sheets, fabrics I’d brought back from studying fabric design in India. I took them all down to their basic components, searching for the answer to the simple question: What works? What emerged were sculptures that describe small pieces of my interior life. Still unable to see the whole, I felt the relief of exposing what held trauma and where that strange mixture of hope lay hidden.

As the isolation from Covid slowly eases, I am again re-assembling my work. Interlacing the interchangeable parts into each other and joining pieces together. Trying to figure out what holds together—in my house, my community, and myself.”

— Tamsen Williams