Kayte Terry

a rinse of past lives takes its name from a poem by Francesca Lisette, a poet who considers bodies and gender in all its fleshy, messy beauty. This is where I like to sit, in this tension of disgust and desire. These “sock voids” are made from socks and undershirts donated to me by friends, family, lovers and strangers. They once touched intimate parts of the body. As a type 1 diabetic, socks mean care and protection of the body, but, my body very rarely does what it’s told. These pieces make visible my love of fleshy bodies and my anxiety about bodies that won’t cooperate.

While I was making A Rinse of Past Lives, so much of Louise Bourgeois’ work crept in. I think you can see it most clearly in the patchwork of striped socks in the center of a few of the voids. Bourgeois’ work so beautifully details the connection between textile and the human body. In the Creative Process, Vol II, she writes:

A newly widowed woman collects the top underwear of her late husband unwashed, and makes a doll with elastic and places it in her bed in his place.

Smell of sweat-it is a symbol of life

Smell of feet an caress of feet related to bring my slippers

Smell of lavender lotion for the hair stirs palpitations after past a half-century

the white loose shirt over pants-kind of bomber jacket

the back of the shirt spread over the back of the pants, after having been in the bathroom.

My fingertips reveal a constellation of scars from testing my blood sugar. High, low, normal, just a tiny little prick and a tiny drop of blood is a life saving measure. I find myself addicted to the ritual, and wish that my state of being could be so easily be measured in one number. 

The photos mimic the ritual, transforming an act that's rarely seen into one that must be seen. As I sew finger to finger, the work becomes an amusement, like a game of cat's cradle. What was once, for me, one of the many drudgeries we diabetics carry like a noose around our necks shifts into an act of control: a reclamation of my body.  

An installation accompanies the photos and shifts slightly each time it is displayed. Flowers photocopied from a magazine found at my grandmother's house, old wallpaper, thread and medical journals are meticulously cut, collaged and pinned to resemble imagined machinations of the body. Flowers sprout from arteries, brain matter dissolves into damask and glands become roots; the body is splayed for all to see but also abstracted as I choose how your see it. Again, it's a reckoning with an uncontrollable form, this body that I've been given.

Beaded sock and video (various sizes), 2017.

Photo Series, various sizes, 2017.

Video (various sizes) and Assemblage (paper, wax, pins 36" diameter), 2015.

Photo Series and video, variable sizes, 2017.

Collage Series, Mixed Media, 11" x 17", 2016.

Collage Series, Mixed Media, 11" x 17", 2016.

My Shimmering Private Sideshow fuses glossy fashion magazines, sequins, cheap fabric with photos of my breasts. I'm interested in the weirdness of the lone breast and how, through this work, I form an understanding of my body. The patchwork of these materials form a personal language that speaks to the fuzzy intersection of my personal desires and feminine cultural expectations. The title of this series comes from a Margaret Atwood poem.

Photo Series, various sizes, 2016.

Photo Series, various sizes, 2016.

This body of work is focused on the concepts of femininity, loss, longing and family illness. I use found and family ephemera, mundane objects and my own body to document and explore the traces left on me by women in my family, both real and imagined. In this work, I’ve developed a taxonomy of symbols: kidneys, gloves, wallpaper, arms, needle and thread, syringes and garden flowers are repeated throughout to tell a story. 

I am particularly interested in showing the marks and scars of auto-immune diseases, which often hide in plain site. Auto-immune diseases are unpredictable and those of us with these diseases feel like our bodies are battlegrounds. 

This work is a reclamation of my body, a posted flag that's both surrender of control and declaration of hope. 

Photo Series, various sizes, 2015.

This body of work is focused on the concepts of femininity, loss, longing and family illness. I use found and family ephemera, mundane objects and my own body to document and explore the traces left on me by women in my family, both real and imagined. 
My maternal and paternal grandmothers, both proper New England women of their time dressed in equally proper attire: sweater sets, white gloves, pink lipstick, pearls. Their hyper-feminine poise fascinated me as a child, and I spent hours pouring over their scarves, brooches and make-up drawers. Both staunch Irish Yankees, they were not doting grandmothers. There was never a hair out of place; I never saw them cry, curse, sweat or get angry.
They both died in the same calendar year and both sides of the family became unmoored with their loss, adrift without their matriarchs. This work is a study of what Jane and Eileen left behind and what they couldn’t speak of in their lifetime.  

My own body is a map of their legacy. 

Photo series, various sizes, 2015.

The patterns and motifs of vintage wallpaper instantly tell a story, of place, history and class. What is left when the pattern is taken away? 

What was once a repeat pattern, frozen in its place of history, has now taken on a life of its own, the motifs within the paper revolting against their place in the print. These skeletal structures are like a body, with its skin peeled. They reveal something new, the forms they take, the shadows they cast are unpredictable and random, unable to be tamed. 
It is in this vacancy that new stories can be woven and the wallpaper that once suffocated us with the burden of history is no longer.

Collage Series, Mixed Media, 11" x 17", 2016

Quilts have long been a medium for story-telling. I like to imagine that, in tapping into this tradition, I am adding my particular experience to the collective voice of quilt-making. While lots of traditional quilt patterns reference the pastoral, these quilts hint at the crowded, mish-mash of city living. I think of them as a map of my world both inside and out and make them in a completely improvisational manner. 
The quilts are stitched together with a mix of machine and hand. This dichotomy of instant gratification and delayed gratification is a crucial part of my making process.