Beauty lies.
But where, exactly?
But where, exactly?
In textile conservation, inherent vice describes a material that carries the conditions of its own destruction within itself. The silk does not age gracefully. It shatters. What’s left isn’t the fabric; it is evidence that the fabric existed.
Sonnet 2 has an answer: in the child, in succession, in the promise to “see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.” Shakespeare builds a compelling case. I’ve never fully believed it. The poem’s promise of renewal is, I think, substitution dressed up as preservation.
This book lives in that gap. A vintage evening gown, a beaded fragment whose silk ground has shattered away, textiles from three centuries sitting together without hierarchy. The materials do not illustrate the poem. They test its logic.
What survives isn’t the original body. It is the evidence it leaves behind.
Dig Deep Trenches in Thy Beauty: repurposed wedding dress, vintage quilt fragments, textile dyes, 16.5" x 24", 2019
