L5S1 (2024)
L5S1 is part of a surrealist series examining fish (a long held fascination in my work). Liminally positioned somewhere between living, degenerating, and regenerating, “L5S1” morphs a fish skeleton’s spine into that of a giant kelp.
The creation of this sculpture was interrupted with my own spine, with a protruding L5S1 disk, exacerbated by degenerative disk disease. I keep returning to the creation of spines as a way to cope with my own dis-ease. They’re a means of reminding myself that degeneration can be transformative. And they’re a method for contemplating the natural relationship between life and decay.
Materials: Recycled cotton. waxed polyester, aluminum wire, steel
Dimensions: 64″ x 36″ x 23″
Grayscale (2023)
I have a long-standing relationship with fish fragments, and this is one of them. A fish (in fragmentation) extends beyond itself; it’s the incompletion that holds possibility.
This is one of the few pieces that I don’t find myself keen to write about because it’s about the act of creating–and I think it already says (with far more concision than I ever could) what needs saying.
What I will offer, instead, is a biographical tidbit. When I started knotting this fish, I could neither stand nor walk. I had no choice but to make it while lying flat on my back. By the time I was able to be upright again, the scales had started to become a deeper shade of grey. All the while I couldn’t be upright, I imagined the fish having a tail. But the moment I could rejoin the world as a biped, I wanted to preserve that feeling of a body in the act of disappearance (or perhaps emergence).
Materials: Recycled cotton, waxed polyester, powder-cated steel, aluminum wire
Dimensions: 20″ x 14″ x 3″
Bird (2021) & Bloodle (2024)
I made this piece to cope with loss. It’s a distillation of grief and an examination of the generative interplay between bleeding and blooming.
I wanted to animate sorrow in complete balance with growth. By capturing the tenacity of a leaky body, I’ve intended to rethink taboos reserved for bodies that seep their bounds.
The Bird is knotted, coiled, wrapped, and stitched around a powder coated steel armature. The Bloodle is knotted, then embroidered onto a perforated steel support, then stitched securely onto a custom-fabricated metal pedestal. The bird and bloodle are detached; and the base of the stand has been discretely stamped with my initials (JLH) and date of completion (2024).
Materials: Recycled Cotton, powder coated Steel, aluminum wire, waxed polyester
Dimensions: 24″ x 17″ x 22″
Weight: 11 lbs
The Undead (2023)
From initial petal to final feather, this mixed media installation took me two years to complete. Nature compels my work, always. But I’m most interested in trying to parse all-too-human systems for representing, understanding, and narrativizing relationships found in nature. We do a lot of storytelling in this domain: it often relies on slippages and truisms that feel comforting.
Both the hummingbird and the flower are creatures galvanized by human culture. Their relationship of mutualism is lauded as a perfectly balanced symbiosis. As a human animal, I can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom something so safe. And this troubles me. So I wanted to dwell in that space of uncertainty: to use knots as vehicle for examining very real representational tensions.
This is a relationship between hummingbirds and flowers in which the narrative veil of safety has been removed.
The Undead is composed of 14 steel hexagons that can be configured in any way and remain perpetually open. Flowers at different stages of bloom are sculpted from minuscule cotton knots. 3 differently-postured birds are suspended and mobile in flight with the help of steel attachments secured to the two large steel arms that purposefully impose support (rather than more passively or implicitly providing it). Red droplets ooze from the most vibrant blossoms that come into the closest contact with the birds’ carved brass beaks. A separate structure rests in front of this circuit comprising a 3D flower with steel stem, underside, and leaves. It grows from a repurposed automotive gear. From this flower hangs a fourth bird.
All metal components of this piece have been fabricated by Loren Wilson whose collaboration at every stage of its creation helped my vision to be (un)alive.
Materials: recycled cotton, waxed polyester, steel, powder coated steel, brass, aluminum wire
Dimensions: Height 80″ x Width 110″ x Depth 70″
Suspension (2023)
I wanted to make a creature that was perhaps the least likely candidate to evoke any sort of empathy from a viewer. Insects can be beautiful, though they’re generally maligned or feared. Cockroaches are survivors. They’ve pre-existed us and will outlast us all. It’s probably precisely that knowledge that causes us to shudder in their presence.
This sculpture was immensely challenging. A bug’s body is complex (needed reverse engineering at times). Its face is unfathomably alien. I loved/loathed every moment of making this piece because there was not a single instance in the months-long ordeal that happened with ease, comfort, repetition, or certainty. Nothing fell into place. I worked for every inch of this hideous beast. And I’ve never grown more. It’s hard to will yourself to make the pieces that you need the most.
Empathy is the thing we need for that which is most unfamiliar or the most disquieting. Working through that which causes discomfort is, in some ways, the project of empathy. By the time this piece was finished, I’d developed a sense of empathy for insects. I’ll eventually return to their form. But I’m not ready just yet.
Materials: Recycled Cotton, Waxed Polyester, Powder Coated Steel, Steel, Aluminum Wire
Dimensions: Height 41″ x Width 24″ x Depth 24″
Spinal Tilt (2023)
When given the choice between hope and despair, I find hope in the ways that illness and injury can tweak perception creatively. My work keeps returning to the spinal columns of fish because they are the most common to me of skeletal structures belonging to living things.
My back is permanently damaged from living an incautious physical life (which includes a sometimes-punitive art practice). I lend my subjects the balance that I can’t seem to find myself. In a spinal tilt imagined surrealistically, there’s an element of escape that is still rooted in something very real.
This sculpture is constructed with macrame knots, fiber emballage, hand stitching, and welding. Its powder coated steel backing is stamped with my initials (JLH) and its year of completion (2022). Two steel loops for hanging are welded onto the backplate.
Metal Fabricator: Loren Wilson
Materials: recycled cotton, powder coated steel, aluminum wire
Dimensions: 31″ long; 21″ wide, 4.5″ deep
Bleeding Heart (2023)
My most recent anatomical heart, and by far the most complex. The palette is composed of rusts, burnt oranges, orangey yellows, reds, magentas, vibrant oranges, and dusty plums. I wanted to choose warm, sanguine colours, but use them joyfully in a botanical composition. Reds, pinks, oranges, purples, and yellows are often colours used to depict pain. But I wanted to use them to depict an untethered form of growth. Some elements in “Bleeding Heart” are realistic, and some are fantastical. It’s the blend of both that yields magical realism, and that was very much my inspiration here. I wanted it to be “wild,” ebullient, yet tempered by its cheeky little details (like bubblegum drops, coated in resin to make them even drippier).
From all angles, I find that this heart has a presence. This is fantastical anatomy staged to grow out of the wall with sculptural qualities that are even more apparent in person. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this piece: front facing, from below, from above, from the sides, from all angles. It’s a really special piece.
Made in a custom fabricated steel frame, “Bleeding Heart” is finished with a solid backplate that’s screwed into place. It hangs easily from a single, hidden metal loop welded onto its back. In collaboration, my partner and I have really worked at innovating specialized hardware for these botanical organs. The framework of this piece is a thing of tremendous beauty.
Materials: Recycled Cotton, Waxed Polyester, Powder Coated Steel, Aluminum Wire, Resin
Dimensions: Length 22″ x Width 18″ x Depth 7″ (approx weight 5lbs)
PNW Heart (2023)
I keep making anatomical hearts because it’s the organ that best represents what it takes to do this sort of work. Every creation is pulled from the heart, tugs at it, sometimes breaks it along the way, but then fills it back up until it bubbles over with something new.
“PNW Heart” isn’t so much a bleeding heart as a dripping heart. I like the way that drips and oozes are somewhat ambiguous. They portray leaky bodies, bodies out of bounds, but they’re also representative of both strife and life. Maybe tears, maybe slime being purged, maybe just life seeping beyond itself–I love the multiple interpretive possibilities encapsulated in drips!
With this piece, I wanted to pay homage to the forests of Vancouver Island that I’m lucky to stroll through every day. Ferns at different stages of growth, fiddleheads, mosses, and lichens grow out of the surface and look almost sanguine themselves. Sometimes it’s only in making something that you understand it: with this piece I understood for the first time that biology is intimately entwined with botany.
This heart has a solid steel backing, welded onto its sides, and hangs from two loops also welded onto its back. Its drips have been dipped in a protective coat of resin, which also acts to make each drip look permanently wet.
Materials: Recycled Cotton, Waxed Polyester, Powder Coated Steel, Aluminum Wire
Dimensions: Height 18″ x Width 11″ x Depth 3″ (weight approx 2lbs)
Mycelial Lungs (2021)
Before creating these botanical lungs, I’d made a more rudimentary set of macrame lungs that provided a useful blueprint. Their palette was inspired by blue and white porcelain, and I was interested to see how its effect was to destabilize a separation between terran and aquatic life. I quite love that ambiguity because it creates a familiar yet still otherworldly surface.
This piece was made during the rise of COVID’s initial outbreak, and that event provided quite a backdrop! As people were losing their capacity to breathe, I was sculpting lungs, and I think that focus itself was rejuvenating.
While originally created in 2021, Mycelial Lungs have undergone a single successful surgery. I added some tufts of grass made from marine debris and attached a custom fabricated powder coated steel back plate to keep all fibers secure over time. These lungs hang from a hook just above their neck, and their back plate has been stamped with my initials (JLH), along with their date of original creation.
Materials: recycled cotton, repurposed marine plastic (pvc), powder coated steel, aluminum wire.
Dimensions: Length 14″ x Width 17″ by Depth 3″ (approx weight 4lbs)
Purple Mycelial Heart (2021)
This heart was my first organ sculpture! It was first created in 2021, and it’s since undergone two successful surgeries that have updated its surfaces. I preserved the original shape, palette, and mycelial growth, but granted its chambers more dynamism and fullness, while adding a custom metal powder coated back to keep all of the fibers attached safely inside.
What I really worked on with this heart was creating something that would look like a striking anatomical heart from afar (against any coloured wall); but then, up close would retain a different sort of visual intrigue. Because this piece is inspired by magical realism, I’ve opted for a gradient that signals its surrealism. Its surface blends organic elements of post-human, mycelial, alien, biological, and botanical worlds.
“Purple Mycelial Heart” hangs from two firmly welded loops attached to its back plate, which has been stamped with my initials (JLH) and dated with its original date of creation (2021).
Material Components: Recycled Cotton, Waxed Polyester, Powder Coated Steel, Aluminum Wire
Dimensions: Length 24″ x Width 18″ x Depth 5″ (weight approx 7lbs)
