Touch Project: Cogito

"Touch, by clarifying and adding to the shorthand of the eyes, teaches us that we live i a three-dimensional world. We look at a photograph taken with someone we love at a small one-llama circus in a rural town, and remember the stickiness of that summer day, the feel of the llama insinuating its velvety nose into our shirt pocket, into our hand, under our arm, and around our chest, gently but irrepressibly looking for food....Touc allows us to find our way in the world of darkness or in other circumstances..."  

A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, Page 94.

Cogito, Particle board, chicken wire, yarn, thread, 2020.

Within the piece various elements of memory are established, the chicken wire, particle board, the knit, and tassels. Each of these items holds a tactile relationship to a memory, when feeling these surfaces a memory is conjured. All of these materials remind me of my childhood, the particle board holds the same hollow luster of a school desk, while the knitted element calls back to hospital visits and the blanket my parents would bring with us. I maintained a garden with a chicken wire fence and trellises and would constantly get snagged on the cut spokes. Lastly, the tassels are imitations of those that bordered curtains in my grandmother’s house, I would constantly run my fingers through the fibers.  

The organization and size of these surfaces in relation to one another reflects the mental clarity of these memories, while the texture of a school desk is a strong memory, compared to the other elements the relationship between the tactile experience and memory recall is not as strong. Where as the tassels, are an immediate signal to memories of my grandmother’s curtains.