Circuit Board

When an artist works within traditional craft, I believe it is our responsibility to contemporize those forms. Otherwise, it’s just pastiche. In this case, macrame is entirely removed from its bohemian connotations. The visual pleasure as the eye follows each line’s journey through the piece is potent and relevant metaphor; electronic circuit boards connect and conduct power; Massimo Vignelli’s classic New York City subway map (maps in general) inspire a simulation of a journey, a guide to choices and paths. The Circuit Boards use composition and technique to explore the tension between assumed ideas, contrasting male-dominated tech world motifs via the gendered skills of so-called “women’s work”—the crafts of macrame, passementerie, weaving. During the early days of the tech boom, in the late 1960s, organizations such as Fairchild Semiconductor and even NASA hired female weavers and other craftswomen to assemble and construct early circuit boards and computer memory modules. The Circuit Boards rectify assumed hierarchies as technique and motif meet on an equitable plane.