Caitlin McCormack: Crocheted Skeletal Remains
Philadelphia-based artist Caitlin McCormack explores memory, trauma, and sexuality through delicately crocheted skeletons. Paying homage to the artistry found within her family, Caitlin finds inspiration in her grandmother’s crochet and her grandfather’s detailed bird carvings. Caitlin’s thought-provoking work asks the viewer to contemplate the impact of memory on our present day experience.
How did your creative journey begin?
I grew up fairly isolated in a super low-income household and both of my parents are artists, so I would use bits of their collage materials and less precious art supplies to make my own toys. My maternal grandmother taught me how to crochet at the age of four and my grandfather showed me the ropes of basic woodcarving. He was a skilled carver and would create remarkably detailed, wooden bird sculptures. My current practice emerged during a time wherein my family was mourning my grandparents’ passing; what began as a meditative activity intended to self-soothe eventually transformed into a method through which I could use crochet to craft detailed sculptures of bird skeletons, paying tribute to and sort of synthesizing both of my grandparents’ preferred art forms.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
My primary influences are folklore, osteological specimens, fading memories, body horror cinema, botanical imagery in medieval tapestries, bad taxidermy, homemade domestic items that don’t serve much of a purpose, scientific and medical museum exhibition design, and materials unearthed while foraging in the woods. Sexuality and gender are prevalent themes in my work, and I draw a lot of inspiration for my compositions from observing the way humans arrange themselves in social settings. Additionally, I compulsively count things and that lifestyle very deftly lends itself to crochet as an art form (for better or for worse).
How has your work shifted and evolved over time?
I previously imposed an almost oppressively binary color palette on my work - everything was black and white. I was very drawn to the sumptuous light absorption of black velvet and how stark the bone-colored thread looked against it. Unsurprisingly, I eventually began to feel very limited by that decision and wanted to broaden the range of subject matter in my work, to make space for various plant forms, deciduous litterfall, and rhizosopheric debris to enter my orbit of consideration, and also to experiment with natural pigments and dye processes. Most importantly, I felt that there was a seriousness inherent in the earlier, black and white work. Humor is extremely important to me and I was desperate for a way to at least semi-successfully incorporate silliness or satire into what I do. Finally allowing myself to use colored thread was apparently the conduit I needed in order to get there. Sometimes I feel embarrassed by how long it took.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
I actually operate out of two studios - one is a spare bedroom in my house and the other is located in a studio building. You have to walk through the former to access my home’s only bathroom, so my days typically begin with me waking up around 7:30, stumbling through my studio to the bathroom with every intention of brushing my teeth but then noticing some minuscule aspect of a piece I want to fix or nudge slightly. So I’ll abandon my bathroom journey and become completely absorbed by my work. This generally escalates into many uninterrupted hours of studio time and absolutely horrendous dental hygiene. Then I’ll take a break to drink some coffee and get back to it. I’ve been adhering to this basic framework for a majority of the past decade, with some variation here and there. If I don’t work, I feel awful.
The privilege of having access to multiple workspaces, or any dedicated studio area at all, has definitely transformed my practice over time. I’m able to experiment more, to work in a larger scale, to keep more varied materials at arm’s reach. Even just having the ability to stand back and examine my work from a distance is a tremendous privilege. I can’t personally say that I’m ever really satisfied by my work more than like 4% of the time but regardless of that, the quality of what I produce definitely relies on being able to access the space I need.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
A lot of my work is hinged upon memories and traumatic recollections. I use imagery of unraveling, disintegrating artifacts to externalize my grief and rage, so a lot of the implied experiences are very hideous, but nevertheless impactful. Definitely hard to talk about, for sure. Right now, I’m working on a solo exhibition at Practice Gallery in Philadelphia, which centers around my experiences as an adolescent submerged in a world of filth and grime through the rampant consumption of horror and porn VHS cassettes. A huge chunk of my identity was forged through the gratuitous absorption of film during that time and I want to use sculpture and installation to explore the ways in which cinema can serve as a portal leading not only to the past, but also a point through which different facets of one’s identity may be accessed. The exhibition will examine the capacity for a nostalgic lens to synthesize reality with fiction, from a softly satirical perspective. I guess what I’m getting at is that watching movies has impacted my practice as much as my life experiences have, in a way.
How has Instagram impacted your art career?
In a very fundamental way, Instagram is responsible for my work’s visibility. I posted grainy images of my crocheted skeletons in 2013 and someone with a huge following eventually shared them, which gave me an unparalleled rush. I was very fortunate to be able to utilize the app for my own benefit at a time when that was possible, before finding increasingly degrading ways to profit off of users superseded the company’s other objectives. I have a difficult time romanticizing or pining for the old days of Instagram because it has always been a company, plain and simple.
It’s very possible that this will make me sound petty, lacking in resilience, or like I’m instilling an unwarranted degree of significance in this app but in all honesty, Instagram as an art tool and the culture surrounding it has distorted and dismantled my self esteem in ways I never thought possible. Self-confidence has never been my strong suit but during moments when I am able to tear myself away from the endless, broken treadmill of self-loathing that the feed perpetuates, when I can disassociate and reflect on the ways social media has interfered with the natural progressions of my peers’ practices and my own work habits, I just feel disgusted. As a known hypocrite, my account is still active. It’s fun to share in-progress works but, man, I am just over Instagram in so many ways. However, I’m also someone who eats prunes and falls asleep watching Matlock every night, so what do I know.
What are your future goals and aspirations?
At the moment, I’m an artist-in-residence at The Wassaic Project in Dutchess County, NY, which has been a dream for some time. I feel so lucky to be here. Continuing to take part in artist residencies is certainly something I would love to pursue, because of the endless opportunities for conversation, engagement, and the privilege of working in a unique space for a little while. I also just want to produce better work. I’m currently developing a concept for a very ambitious, pseudoscientific institutional exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist and Paradice Palase co-director Kat Ryals, which has been thoroughly exciting.
It’s challenging and terrifying to identify specific objectives, not exclusively because these are such uncertain times for artists, but because I have always sort of felt like a free-falling leaf. I am very dedicated to my work, but diligence and persistence have never felt like powerful enough assets for me to use as vehicles to propel things forward, and most successes feel like flukes. A lot of people have encouraged me to establish clear intentions over the past few years, and I have to say it really helps. My brain loves to make plans but as someone with PTSD, articulating a defined set of future objectives can be difficult because I guess my body is primed to anticipate pain. Honestly, my lifelong goal is to be extricated from my physical form and to just become a vapor.
Website: www.caitlintmccormack.com
Instagram: @mister_caitlin