“Grass Cocoon” (2018). All images © Jeanne Simmons, shared with permission
“When we spend a lot of time in a place, and if we are paying attention, a kind of intimacy develops,” says Jeanne Simmons. The artist, who’s based in the Pacific Northwest, grounds her practice in this sense of familiarity and ease with her surroundings. “We come to know the plants that grow there and the critters that roam there… We may even begin to feel that we ourselves have become part of that place, and it is this feeling that sustains and inspires me.”
After gathering natural materials like branches, wild vegetables, and bark, Simmons constructs garments that intertwine her own body with the landscape and obscure the distinction between the two. In one work, a full skirt made of Queen Anne’s Lace trails from her waist and blends with a meadow, while another piece braids dried vegetation into her blond hair, developing a feet-long braid that appears to emerge from the ground. “Grass Cocoon” is similar, twisting the artist’s locks into the material and swaddling her body in a sheath of green. “This is how I celebrate and deepen my connection with the natural world. I suppose I have discovered that the best way for me to become part of the landscape… is to wear it,” she shares. “It is also, at least in part, a lamentation for the catastrophic loss of that connection that we are witnessing in real-time.”
Simmons has several works in progress at the moment, including a kelp shroud and fennel gown, and is collaborating with director and producer Ward Serrill on a film about her practice. Keep up with those projects on her site and Instagram. (via Lustik)
“Grass Cocoon” (2018)
“Extensions” (2020)
“Lace Skirt” (2019)
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