Katherine Soucie
Katherine Soucie
Installation, 2013 + 2016
Hand dyed and printed hosiery scraps (Sans Soucie), wrapping, binding, broken sewing machines, 300lbs of hand dyed waste hosiery 250 sq ft. floorspace, 10 ft x 10 ft wall space
Raisons D’etres is an ongoing body of work that reflects upon the production of my own waste in relation to the materials I produce and reconstruct from industry waste. The tiny strips of offcut dyed and printed cloth are carefully wrapped and bound ritualistically to honour and value a history associated with the materials and machines. Binding has historically been used as form of mending in the context of healing a wound or wrapping the dead. Historically many cultures have wrapped their dead for funerary purposes. In Scandanavian folk culture, they would bind the dead to their grave to ensure the spirits of the newly dead would not return. In a mummification like manner, I mindfully wrapped each machine as I meditated upon their loss of value and use in society. The waste remains accumulated from my hosiery process were transformed into threads of healing where I (re)imagined their raisons d’êtres from a desire to give new life and meaning to these materials and objects.
Katherine Soucie
Sans Soucie, 2018
Pre-Consumer Waste Hosiery, Waste Hosiery Scraps, Embroidery, Garment Construction N/A
HERstory is collection that pays homage to Pioneering Women through the narrative of our unique textiles. Hosiery is designed to be a second skin and is a textile that has story so deeply connected to women and history. This collection is a codification of pioneering women and their contribution to fashion, art and life. The execution of this collection will take on the role of a series of Fashion Portraits series Inspired by the life, journey, and spirit of Patti Smith, Nina Simone, Georgia O’Keefe, Sonia Delaunay and Louise Bourgeois. It is a statement about women, activism, style, identity and sustainability.
Katherine Soucie
Installation, 2013
Pre-Consumer Waste Hosiery, Digital Embroidery, Silkscreen, Iron Fragments, Rust Dyeing 10x10ft
Post Mordant was built in response to the varying degrees of obsolescence that exists in the identity of textiles and the technologies responsible for their production. Waste hosiery from a Canadian textile mill was obtained and screen printed in its existing form before it was reconstructed. I used an obsolete hosiery hemming machine and an industrial embroidery machine to sculpt the cloth. The tools I used dye the materials (salvaged iron fragments from train yards) were wrapped and bound with the waste textiles in a shroud like manner to speak to suggest forms of reciprocity. Hosiery a second skin, but the material isn’t biodegradable. With the piece, I was using a rusting process to decompose the material because it is the only thing that will decompose that material. Over time, the piece will start to corrode and turn into iron fillings. I was trying to bring the material back into the earth with my process.
