Alex Alvis Art

Once you identify a tradition of women's work as art. . . as an artist you pull that into the work.  . . . . (Bags as a symbol and iconography)  Conceptually interesting to me was to go beyond symbols and iconography to the very materials and how you use them - so I'm interested in stitching - not just because it referred to women's traditional arts but because stitching is a connective process.  So the notion of anything - knotting; tying; stitching - I'm interested in connecting and notions of layering and taking fragments and making them wholes.  If you think about the bags and the presences you mention, those are made up out of rags; discarded fabric given to me by women friends...old sheets or whatever.  And I would rip them up and recycle them into work, not only literally putting the women into my life-into my work but metaphorically taking the discarded pieces that weren't considered important as art.  Or they didn't even have a function anymore, and making a whole(s)...making something out of nothing.  But I also felt metaphorically, the notion of women - you know - our lives are so fragmented.  And so it was a metaphor for taking the bits and pieces of our lives and constructing something whole and new and - later work, which were wrapped sculptures...they were very much built from the inside out. . . and so building out of itself.