Bobbi Meier
Fear, cloistering, looming pandemic. In 2017 I made a grid of intimate soft-sculptural objects entitled Everything Was Going So Well, as a reaction to several years of caregiving for sick and dying friends and family members. In anticipation of a lock-down and looming pandemic I decided to make a sculpture-a-day, using only existing materials available to me from my home studio, and revisiting the notion of everything falling apart. I transformed pantyhose and spandex into emotional bundles of soft materials in an attempt to create comfort and order out of chaos. Sitting night after night in front of Netflix, the physicality of suturing, stabbing, binding and constricting were both agitated and cathartic reactions to my situation.
Everything Was Going So Well: Redux (black flower)
2020
Pantyhose, black fiber flower, fiberfill on wood block for wall hanging.
8" x 10" x 5"
Everything Was Going So Well: Redux (resting on her laurels)
2020
Pantyhose, fiberfill on slip-cast porcelain base.
12" x 10" x 9"
Everything Was Going So Well: Redux (fishnet)
2020
Pantyhose, spandex, fishets, fiberfill on wood block for wall hanging.
14" x 8" x 6"
A few thoughts and influences
I am interested in art that is psychological in nature; work that makes me think, wonder,
cry, laugh. I have deep respect for the life and work of Louise Bourgeois and am
inspired by her life-long commitment to following her path as an artist, while navigating
marriage, family and the biases of the art-world. Like Bourgeois I work with a variety of
materials that are domestic in nature, mining from my personal experiences to create
sensuous, abstract representations of the body.
Bourgeois said, “An artist can show things that other people are terrified of
expressing.”
I’m working on it.