“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s
house.”
--Audre Lorde
“I want to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.”
--Paul Butler
My current work merges craft with objects of violence and control to examine
large structures of power and how they might be interrupted by ways of making
that are often labeled as gendered, amateur, and low. By hand-weaving razor wire
fences that have been ensconced with yarn knitted on children’s toy knitting machines and morphing seminal craft tools like spinning wheels into cyborg like creatures, notions of what it means to “master” are thrown into question. To “master” is to wield power over others, but “to master” in the context of craft is to possess a self-sufficient creative agency over materials and tools. I hover between the ideas of Lorde and Butler, reclaiming the mastery of craft to create an alternative set of tools that could potentially dismantle “the master’s
house.”
