My work with sheets grew out of my thinking about my mother’s efforts at maintaining aesthetic order in her home—even if the rest of the house is a wreck, she wants her linen closet to be beautiful when she opens the door. Similarly, I construct formal arrangements from bed linens, particularly sheets and pillowcases. I fold and pile these sheets on simple shelves or chairs, as well as on and around the significant or quirky architectural features of an exhibition space. I think of these folding and stacking activities as akin to creating paintings with brush and canvas. The interactions among color combinations, printed patterns, and folding systems become visually engrossing and reference abstract or minimalist paintings.

However, because I am using these non-traditional materials that are so intimately connected with human bodies, the works are also infused with the memories and habits of their previous owners. But since these previous owners are strangers, there is no great-aunt or grandmother to tell me the story associated with the object. These histories are lost, so the sheets become material for pieced together, re-imagined histories, including the narrative of my own processes of folding, stacking, and layering. Whether piled in the awkward corners of a room or layered on a shelf, the sheets are reminders of a variety of human activities: sleeping, dreaming, housekeeping, lovemaking, birthing, dying, etc. They offer us a glimpse into the linen closets of other people and other times and remind us of our own experiences in the comforting confines of bed.