Domestic Labour, Repetition
and

Acts of Care in Art Making

By Megan H Carroll

B.F.A, Emily Carr University, 2006

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTERS OF FINE ART

Emily Carr University of Art + Design 2023

© Megan H Carroll 2023

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Fig. 1, Megan Carroll, Toilet Brush, Considering the Bathroom
(Kitchen Floor Series), 2023
Charcoal, Black Chinese Ink with Gold Suspension, 24”x24”

2

Table of Contents
4. Abstract
5. Acknowledgements
6. List of Figures
7. Introduction
10. Positionality
12. Artistic Method
16. Artistic Methodology
21. Work 1 Kitchen Floor Series
32. Work 2 Interruptions & Erasures
41. Work 3 Acts of Care Series
47. Conclusion
48. Exhibition Installation and Thesis Defence Reflections
51. Works Cited
53. Works Consulted

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Abstract
This MFA Thesis Project explores how repetitive domestic labour in the
home, predominantly carried out by women and in particular my experience
as mother and caregiver informs my MFA research. The Thesis Project
artworks range in scale from small handheld intimate embroidered textile
pieces to large abstract paintings created on my kitchen floor with tools such
as brooms, toilet brushes and rags that are commonly associated with
women’s work. I use a minimal colour palette of black, greys and gold to
highlight the sombre and never ending actions of daily domestic
maintenance. By giving the marks presence and weight, I am demanding
that they be acknowledged and the audience feels the relentlessness of
activities that never seem complete. I incorporate concepts addressed by
artists such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her documentation of invisible
labour as well as Janine Antoni who physically put herself into the act of art
making with her body. Ultimately, my practice draws on these artistic
influences to generate artwork that speaks to my lived experience as an
artist, mother and caregiver.

4

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Randy Cutler, my
supervisor for their incredible patience and feedback. You have
challenged and pushed me to dig deeper and ask valuable questions. A
special thank you to my defence team, Ingrid Koenig and Mary Coss.
Additionally I’d like to recognise the staff and support of Emily Carr
University, Lauren Mardson, Dr. prOphecy sun, and Sarah Ostenson for
your generous support.
I am grateful to both my low residency cohorts of 2022 and 2023 for
support and encouragement, their questions and suggestions were
invaluable. I’ve enjoyed the banter and conversations that have helped
me see my work through a different lens.
Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family, who have cheered me
on and asked me “What the heck is an MFA?” My kiddos, Raven and
Elijah who inspire me and big thank you to my husband, your strength
and tenacity have taught me a lot, without your encouragement I would
have never undertaken this venture.

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List of Figures

● Fig. 1, Megan Carroll, Toilet Brush, Considering the Bathroom
(Kitchen Floor Series), 2023, Charcoal, Black Chinese Ink with Gold
Suspension, 24” x 24”.
● Fig. 2, Sweeping Meditation
● Fig. 3, Megan Carroll, Kitchen Floor series, 2023, video still.
● Fig. 4, Megan Carroll, WWU Steps, Visual labour from the AS
Bookstore, 2021-22.
● Fig. 5, Megan Carroll Untitled (Kitchen Floor Series), 2023 Broom
Experiment, Chinese Ink on paper, 48” x 48”.
● Fig. 6, Megan Carroll Kitchen Floor Series Untitled, 2023, Toilet brush,
Chinese Ink with gold Gouache on canvas, 24” x 24”.
● Fig. 7, Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1993. Screenshot- will be
removed when the document is published.
● Fig. 8, Megan Carroll, Interruptions and Erasures, 2022/23,
Embroidery on cotton bedsheet (size yet to be determined)
● Fig. 9 and 10, Megan Carroll, Interruptions and Erasures, 2022/23,
Embroidery on cotton bedsheet, details (size yet to be determined)
● Fig. 11, Ayling-Smith will be removed when the document is
published.
● Fig. 112, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022, Various Size, Embroidery
Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or Cotton
● Fig. 13, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022, Various Size, Embroidery
Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or Cotton
● Fig. 14, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022, Various Size, Embroidery
Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or Cotton
● Fig. 15, Mending on denim with various denim patches and stitches,
hand-stitched.
Photo Credit, Katrina Rodabaugh
● Figure 16, Molly Martin

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Introduction
This MFA research is informed by the history of women’s work, domestic
labour, gender roles1 and what it means to be a female artist who is also a
mother and wife. The thesis project has been guided by some key
questions. How might an engagement with domestic objects and actions
become part of an artistic method? What are the range of emotions that
women artists/mothers endure as we navigate the endless daily rituals of
the home? How can anger, frustration and ambivalence be woven into
artworks? And finally, will working this way assist in processing life's
experiences, finding clarity and purpose, both for the artist and the viewer?
While I don’t always directly answer these questions in this paper, they have
inspired the larger issues that I am grappling with. I aim for viewers to
connect intimately with the art and reflect on their own relationships with
these activities. Through simple methods and often ignored materials, I
encourage introspection and an appreciation for the beauty and complexity
of everyday life.
Admittedly, I could spend years researching artistic practices that
explore domestic labour and gender roles in the home. Indeed, there are
many artists and social scientists who have dedicated their practice to this
overarching theme. My focus here is on artistic research that entangles
material explorations, themes of time and repetition as well as the working
through of emotions that permeate my daily lived experience. Experiences
that are sometimes influenced by the inherent privilege of being a white

1

For example:
Rosita Parker. The Subversive Stitch. Embroidery and the making of the feminine. 1984,
Kassia St.Claire. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History,‎2019,
Clare Hunter. Threads of Life, A History of the World through the Eye of a Needle. 2020,
Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women Cloth and Society in Early Times,1994

7

woman, within a middle class structure.2 I acknowledge a few women
artists that have informed my understanding of domestic labour as an
aesthetic practice alongside theories and writing that deepen this
discussion. To be honest, this feels like the beginning of an artistic trajectory
that will sustain me for years to come. And as important as this topic is for
the ongoing fight for equality, at this time and in this document, I explore the
labour (artistic and otherwise) performed predominantly by myself through
an engaged artistic method.

2

I have struggled with finding the appropriate words about my own privilege. I grew up in a blue collar
family, in a homogenous neighbourhood in western Canada. My father worked hard to provide for his
family, we would not have been considered wealthy but we always had enough. Growing up I didn’t
have to think about race, I am from the generation that was taught that Canada was a mosaic/melting
pot. It wasn’t until I started travelling and then subsequently moving to the US that I started to
understand the depth and breadth of how I was able to navigate the different spaces. These days and
in this current political climate, I am very aware of my inherent privilege and I try not to take it for
granted. I recognise that race has not been a barrier for me that I have been given many opportunities
and chances that others would not have access to based solely on my race.
Because of the personal narrative of my thesis work and the document, tackling race at this
time felt disingenuous to me. I wish that this didn’t need to be said but the fact that it does means
there is still still work to be done. I would like to be a part of the solution and not the problem, and I
know that there are many voices that I can still learn from and that my story is not the only one. As my
artistic career unfolds I would like to respectively include other stories and viewpoints.

8

Fig. 2, Megan Carroll, Sweeping Meditation,
Kitchen Floor Series, 2023
Chinese ink on paper,
30’ x 4’

9

Positionality
As an artist with two teenage children and a husband with a hereditary
neurological disease, which I will speak to later, my research is directly
informed by the realities of care3. In many ways, this MFA degree has been
an opportunity to understand my current situation through artistic research,
practice and the power of making. The journey has been surprising for its
twists and turns. The work began through an exploration of personal and
bodily trauma via fabrics inherited from my family. The focus soon evolved
into addressing more immediate challenges through materials and a daily
negotiation of difficult emotions.
I spent four years working towards my BFA in the early 2000s, and
suddenly two events changed my course. My husband was diagnosed with
Huntington’s Disease and we decided to have children. When I graduated
from Emily Carr institute of Art and Design in 2006, I did so from bedrest in
the hospital for complications due to a high-risk multiple pregnancy. It was
probably predictable that art would become my last priority. Equally
predictable, I also lost my touch with my creativity. New motherhood always
has its challenges but new motherhood with premature twins was more
than I could have anticipated. The loneliness and boredom4 from bedrest
were barely memories before I was a full-time caregiver twice over. This was
a different type of loneliness and boredom, created by monotony, repetition
and overwhelming responsibility. At 32, fresh from my undergraduate
degree, I put my passions aside to raise babies and help my husband
3

De La Bellacasa, María Puig. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. 3rd
ed., PostHumanities (Paperback), 2017 and Garbes, Angela. Essential Labor: Mothering as Social
Change. Harper Wave, 2022.
4
In the article The Unengaged Mind: Defining Boredom in Terms of Attention, authors Eastwood,
Frischen, Fenske and Smilek, consider different theories of boredom. The one I am most interested in
is arousal, “when it is not possible to achieve an optimal level of arousal through engagement with the
environment” (2012). For me, this essentially involved experiencing a lack of excitement with my
artistic ambitions and the ways in which it offered connections to the world around me.

10

achieve his grad school and post doctoral ambitions. We both thought that
this was temporary. Once the twins were old enough they would go to
daycare, then school and I could focus again on my art practice and find
employment outside the home. If I was lucky it would be creative. However
reality set in as on my husband’s student stipend we could not afford
daycare. It made more sense for me to stay home with the twins as I would
only be working to pay for daycare while I was outside of the home. The
years flew by and I became a stay at home mother. I cooked, I cleaned, I
made dinners, beds, washed clothes and homeschooled our children. I was
an educator, entertainer and disciplinarian. I tried throughout those years to
hold on to ‘I’ but truthfully I had become ‘We’. My husband would tell people
I was an artist, justifying why I was at home but in reality the demands of his
career meant that I was needed to run the household and what little time I
had for art evaporated quickly. I became increasingly frustrated trying to be
a new mother and an artist. It was at this point that I started modifying my
practice and seeking out creativity when and where I could, small drawings,
sewing and even cooking became outlets. I found ways to fit my creativity
into the repetition of my domestic routines.

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Artistic Method
My artistic method is directly connected to my lived experience. As stated
above, I learned to modify my practice and seek out creativity when I could,
fitting creativity into my daily domestic chores. As a result, my home also
became my studio which has informed and constrained what I have been
able to make. I have developed strategies that allow me to continue working
while raising children and supporting my husband. What I have produced
with the thesis research is a series of projects that build upon previous
practices while developing new ways of working. This includes hand
stitching with embroidery thread on worn out and/or vintage textiles as well
as drawing on paper with ink, charcoal and gouache with the use of
domestics tools. I deliberately chose this way of making because as noted
by Claire Hunter in the Threads of life. A history of the world through the eye
of a needle, “materials are cheap and readily sourced. … easily
accommodated when living conditions are cramped. Moreover, it can be
done anytime of the day and be fitted around domestic chores and child
care.” 5 In this way, my artistic strategies engage with daily domestic
patterns and ways of mapping or recording time. I purposefully use limited
tools, a reduced palette and minimal spaces of practice as a way of
reflecting and transforming my domestic environment. These artistic
methods are conducted in the privacy of the home because this is what is
available to me. Perhaps more importantly, the invisibility of practising in the
home highlights the kinds of women’s work that never gets seen or
acknowledged. Of course, this way of working is directly informed by the
5

Hunter, Clare. Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle. Abrams Press,
2020.(271)

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reality that I have been making work around and in response to my domestic
responsibilities.
My life has been set up in such a way that being a homemaker and a
caregiver has6 informed how I currently approach art making. During the
most formative years of my children’s early childhood and my husband's
academic pursuits I found ways to express my creativity through domestic
acts. I didn’t know it then but I was unwittingly performing a kind of
maintenance work more often seen in the public realm.
When I think about the labour in the home, the core issues that come
to mind include time, physicality, emotional investment, as well as concepts
of invisibility, disappearance and value7. Maintaining a home and caring for
others is monotonous, repetitive, mundane and often thankless. Through
the Thesis Project, I have attempted to record domestic actions by giving
them representational presence while simultaneously calling attention to the
often overlooked functions of domestic maintenance, such as the repetitive
nature of them or their utilitarian necessity. These actions are carried out
day in and day out to keep a household running. They are unglamorous but
so fundamental to the upkeep of a home that one only notices these actions
in their absence.
I use repetitive actions such as sewing the same stitch over and over
again or doing a task over prolonged periods of time to highlight the never
6

Recently at dinner out with my husband’s colleagues, someone asked me ‘what do you do?’- the
dreaded question about worthiness, but I’ve been trying to get better as self identifying and I said
artist! Their response was ‘no, what do you do for work?’ exasperated, I said ‘caregiver’. The table got
quiet, nobody quite knew how to respond and conversation moved on.
The University of Technology Sydney’s Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion Created a
collaborative project inviting members of the UTS community such as Australian multimedia
performance artist Danica I. J. Kenžević who taps into undervalued labour creating a series of videos
caring for an elderly parent with a disability. Meaning Making – Art as Acts of Care “is a different kind
of conversation that invites us to engage with the empathetic and embodied conditions that shape the
emotional landscape of our lives” and seeks way of “luminating the experience of caring into art and
social spaces.”(“Making Meaning: Art as Acts of Care”)
7
I share this interest with several artist such as Mary Kelly and her artworks about motherhood, in
Post Partum Document.(1979), Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) and peer artist as
well as curator Eliane Luther who curated the group show Clocking in for Unpaid Labor (2023) that I
was a participant in.

13

ending monotony of the labour performed in the home. For this repetition
mimics the endless cycle of housework and maintenance. This is
exemplified in Kitchen Floor Series 2023 (see Fig. 1 & 1.2), Interruptions &
Erasures 2023 (see Fig. 4) and Acts of Care Series 2023 (see Fig. 5). With
the brush works in the Kitchen Floor series, I used a single gesture to make
repetitive and almost meditative marks. These gestures are generated by
using utilitarian tools found in the home. For instance, I use a toilet brush
(see Fig. 3) to move ink around the paper which mimics the motion of
vigorously and intensely cleaning a toilet. Or I enlist a broom to sweep ink
across a large piece of paper as if I was cleaning the kitchen floor. Despite
the simplicity of the tools employed, they became ideal tools to express
emotional energies such as anger, frustration and grief.

Fig. 3, Megan Carroll, Kitchen Floor series, 2023, video still.

14

I purposefully use a minimalist colour palette in all of the thesis
projects. Many of the works on paper are black ink8 on a white ground,
highlighting the intensity of the gesture of the marks made from the tools. It
is not so much about composition as it is about the emotional energy put
into the act of laying down the marks. At times I employ gold, which adds a
quality of preciousness and gives importance to the easily overlooked
actions of domestic labour. The gold highlights call attention to the care put
into the ordinary overlooked acts of domesticity.
For the embroidery works, I mostly use grey on grey in varying shades
that match or progressively contrast with the ground fabric which itself is a
charcoal hue. I want the colours to disappear into one another so that the
viewer can not tell when one colour ends and another begins, similar to my
daily routines where I am moving from one activity to the next, often without
pause. The subtle colour shifts denote an element of blurring whether of
time, or life into art. With these artworks, I may use gold as a highlight to
break the monotony of the gesture and give importance to the easily
overlooked . This is my way of saying, I am here, I made this thing - or
touched this object and it may be inconsequential but it has value. I don’t
want my efforts to disappear.
The materials I have focused on for the thesis works, charcoal, ink,
embroidery thread and fabric which are simple, humble and commonly
found. The fabrics are particularly precious as they are upcycled scraps
from worn-out bedsheets from my marital bedroom and signifies our
relationship, which I speak to later in this paper.

8

Kassia St.Clair has several entries in her book, The Secret Lives of Color on the pigments
associated with black such as Ink, Jet, Pitch et al. She gives a short description of invention, use and
symbolism for each. I use Chinese ink, originally this type of ink was derived from the soot of candles,
called lampblack and combined with binders. She notes “Inks tend[ ] to be black because they need to
be very fluid… [to] be sufficiently legible at high levels of dilution”. (St. Clair, 271) Black also carries
with it heavy and intense emotive qualities, such as death, anger and spirituality; it is that rawness of
emotion that draws me to its use.

15

Artistic Methodology
My artistic methodology has been focused on researching materials and
practices that resonate with the inspiration drawn from what I can
accomplish given my current situation. For example, I have been engaged
with the history of textiles and the role that women played in their creation
and how it relates to the development of civilization through production,
trade and commerce.9 I have sought out online workshops10 and in person
ones when time permits on different modes of working with textiles, such as
weaving, quilting, and surface pattern design. I am constantly updating my
skills on the use of gouache, video editing, digital artmaking, and design
through Skillshare classes. I am also continually reading articles in
publications such as Fiber Art Now, Smithsonian Magazine, Where Women
Create,11 and others. I am particularly drawn to articles about women who
use textiles in unconventional ways such as artist Coulter Fussell, who
creates painterly quilts with donated clothing and other fabrics. I have also
focused on specific women artists who themselves navigate issues of
women’s work and domestic labour. Throughout the course of my two years
of MFA research I have been drawn to an array of artists and texts. One of
the most influential has been Mierle Laderman Uekles. I would like to detail
some of her influence on my practice here as it has been truly significant.
9

Kassia St Clair in her book The Golden Thread and Elizabeth Wayland Barber in hers, Women’s
work the first 20,000 years both suggest that without textiles and the labour performed by women,
(such as harvesting, processing, producing thread, weaving and sewing that could be done while
tending to children, cooking and other essential activities), civilization would not have been able to
thrive. For example: Turning sinew into strands or plant fibre into thread gave humankind the ability to
tie things together, creating nets, traps etc to hunt, weaving tree bark to make baskets to carry food.
Sewing two hides together to make body coverings or tents gave people the ability to expand their
territory into cooler climates giving them access to different types of foods. Later, the Silk Road that
expanded trade and ideas would not have been possible without the production of the valuable
commodity of silk.
10
Due to Covid-19 many in-person workshops were moved online. That let me take live classes in my
own home with artists in New York, Mississippi and other parts of the country.
11
Smithsonian did an amazing article on Bisa Butler,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/bisa-butler-stitches-together-quilts-african-american-ex
perience-180975397/

16

Uekles’s prolific career began as a student at the Pratt Institute and includes
her long standing artist residency at the New York Sanitation Department. I
recognize that her journey has not been easy. Early on in her marriage to
Jacob Ukeles, with a newborn infant, she became frustrated. She writes,
“Half of my week I was the mother, and the other half the artist. But, I
thought to myself, this is ridiculous, I am the one.”12 She was inspired to
write the Manifesto Maintenance Art 1969!13 recognizing how those who
performed the monotonous acts of maintenance and care were usually
invisible and underpaid. When she declared “My Working will be the
Work”14, this defined her life and practice moving forward as an artist. The
written artwork, a four page typed document, and ensuing practice
challenged the perceptions of her public role as a mother and an artist.
When I started to focus my research on artist mothers, labour,
women’s work, and feminism, Mierle Laderman Ukeles popped onto my
radar. Like Ukeles, I had become frustrated trying to be a new mother and
an artist but unlike her it took me years to grapple with the challenges.
Reading about Mierle Laderman Ukeles project at the New York Sanitation
Department15 and her manifesto inspired me to start documenting the types
of labour I was doing at the bookstore. I made observations on the
similarities between my experiences as a new employee, my domestic roles
and the labour of maintenance workers (See Fig 2). At the end of every work
day, I felt compelled to collect names and numbers of students’ book orders
on scraps of paper. I then scanned and arranged them so that they made a
repeatable pattern that I reproduced on fabric.

12

1.Ryan, B. Art in America. “Manifesto for Maintenance: A Conversation With Mierle Laderman
Ukeles” https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/draft-mierle-interview-56056/
13
I first read the manifesto in PC Phillips 2016 book Mierle Laderman Ukeles for the Queen’s
Museum exhibition. All quotes from the manifesto are from Philips’ book.
14
Phillips, Ukeles, Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!
15
https://www.sanitationfoundation.org/blog/portrait-of-an-artist-mierle-laderman-ukeles

17

Fig.3, Megan Carroll, WWU Steps,
Visual labour from the AS Bookstore, 2021-22
Digital repeat pattern

18

Ukeles manifesto has been important to how my thesis project
evolved.16 In this text based work, each name and number represents a
student's textbook order that I had to retrieve during RUSH week(s). At one
point, in a period of less than 15 days, I estimated I had walked more than
the equivalent of a marathon in a space that wasn’t that much larger than
my living room. This was an intense period of repetitive physical labour.
Once the orders were printed, processed individually, searched for among
the rows of textbook shelves, picked up and packaged, they finally came to
me to be alphabetized and put on the corresponding shelves where I would
retrieve them for the individual. There was often frustration about the
slowness of the process for the students, many arguments,complaints and
occasionally insults. After a nine hour day, my feet would be swollen and
blistered and then I would go home to think about family and dinner. By
documenting my labour at the Associated Students Bookstore at the
University of Washington and creating a composition that incorporated the
residue of work I was able to visualise how labour could be art. WWU Steps
(Fig 2) is a digital image of what looks like rows and columns of handwritten
text that are both organised and chaotic, carefully printed but also scratched
through or scribbled over. This pattern, (in which the image can be digitally
repeated endlessly on all four sides) has no defining direction which gives it
a labyrinthine composition but also allows me to print and reproduce it
infinitely and at various sizes on different substrates. A collage of several
pages of lists documenting transactions, this work for me is both
aesthetically interesting, documents a kind of performance of the
interactions in a service role and became a breakthrough for my thesis
research.
The subject of labour is important to me and Ukeles practice speaks
to gestures that resonate and inform my own artistic investigations. While
16

Phillips, Ukeles, Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!

19

there are many similarities, her approach is clearly different from my own.
Her projects are often large-scale collaborative pieces that engage and
require public participation. My thesis work has been created in the home,
alone, while the children are at school and my husband is at work. In Touch
Sanitation, (1978-1980), Ukeles documented herself meeting and shaking
the hands of hundreds of stigmatised sanitation workers to recognize “that
the individuals who take the garbage don’t make the garbage .”17 I see this
example of the sanitation workers doing a repetitive and often invisible
mundane job , as not dissimilar to that of the relentless acts of maintenance
performed by housewives. Through her four page artist document,
Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! some shared themes between these
public employees and the private work of most housewives emerge such as
repetitive labour, invisibility and the ways in which they are undervalued even
if they are essential to one's quality of life.

17

Quoted by Ukeles in Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Press Release: August 22, 1984

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Work 1, Kitchen Floor Series

Six months after my husband and I married in an abrupt ceremony in 1998
we were back in the US from Germany, where my husband's family lived.
He was in the US Army, and we were 'home' for Christmas. One evening, his
father sat us down in the kitchen and explained to us that my husband's
mother had Huntington's Disease. The reason for telling us this, then, they
thought I could be pregnant - why else would we have done something so
unexpected?
I will probably never get over the fear in my husband's eyes that night as he
left the room, leaving me standing there confused, lost and scared. I had
never heard of Huntington's Disease. I did not know it was an incurable brain
disease, it was fatal and that people who have the mutation have a
significantly reduced life span with their quality of life rapidly declining often
starting in the prime of their lives. Any child born to someone with the HD
mutation, as my husband was, has a 50/50 chance of inheriting it,
and so would any children they had.
Several years later we would be sitting in a waiting room watching the
clock tick as we waited for the result of his genetic fate. Distractedly I
looked at magazines and the images on the wall, all I could see were
babies and happy smiling families. When we were called into the office, we
sat down directly in front of a large window, staring out onto a sunny
beautiful day full of light. Looking at both of us, the Dr opened the envelope
and asked my husband "Do you really want to know?". My world went black.
My husband vowed that we were never having children, he had the gene
that causes Huntington's Disease (HD)
Megan H Carroll, Virtual Studio Blog post 2022

21

Fig. 4, Megan Carroll Kitchen Floor Series Untitled, 2023,
Broom Experiment, Chinese Ink on paper, 48” x 48”
(Feet shown for scale.)

22

Fig. 5, Megan Carroll Kitchen Floor Series Untitled, 2023,
Toilet brush , Chinese Ink with gold Gouache on canvas,
30”x30”18
In the painting Toilet Brush (Fig. 1) part of the Kitchen Floor Series,
black Chinese ink is spiralled on white ground drawing the eye around the
circle and back to the centre. Using a toilet brush, I applied crushed
charcoal and ground it into the paper in a circular motion, reinforcing the
18

I wanted to see what it would be like to use canvas instead of paper. Using Canvas made me be
more thoughtful and considerate of my application which is opposite of what my intention is for the
series.

23

relentlessness of domestic labour. The harder I applied pressure the darker
and more bold the marks on the paper became, matching the intensity of
the ongoing emotional tug of war I was experiencing between the
expectations and responsibilities of my family responsibilities and MFA
commitments.
I first used a gesso ground as I thought this would hold the marks
better. My gesso palette was unclean and there were faint streaks of pink
and beige which I decided to leave, they reminded me of the colours of
mineral deposits, like a ring around the toilet bowl. As with all of the Kitchen
Floor series I mimicked the domestic labour related to the application. Using
a toilet brush and crushed charcoal, I worked from outside in, for a spiralling
effect. The black Chinese ink with gold suspensions was added for depth.
I found that the painting lacked the intensity I wanted.
I was drawing on the recollection, years ago when my young son was cleaning
the toilet. Instead of brushing clockwise, he went counter clockwise and slowly
unscrewed the head of a toilet brush completely off. Somehow the brush
managed to get lodged far enough into the toilet that it was unretrievable and a
plumber had to be called. When the plumber determined that he could not
dislodge the brush, it was decided that the entire toilet had to be removed to
retrieve the obstruction. The whole operation then took a matter of minutes but
the bill was astronomical. Getting my son to clean the toilet has been a
struggle ever since.
The size of the drawing is determined by the available space in my
kitchen, where I spend most of my days either cleaning or cooking. (See
Video https://vimeo.com/807100756) As noted earlier, I was inspired by
Ukeles “Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!”,where she declared “MY

24

WORKING WILL BE THE WORK”19 Ukulele's manifesto was influenced by
her own struggle of becoming an artist/mother. In an interview with Randy
Kennedy in The New York Times, the artist states: “I was in a crisis because
I had worked years to be an artist, and I didn’t want to be two people. It
seemed like I could be an artist only by being two people.”20 I continually
return to this statement as I develop the Kitchen Floor series.
In my research exploring the impact of domestic labour on female
artists21I have seen instances where women were told that they can not be
both, an artist and a mother. Artist Rebecca Campbell recounts in the
documentary Artist and Mother (2018)22 how several artists and critics said
that “they personally feel that if you are an artist and a mother you are either
a bad artist or a bad mother.” Ema Shin, a textile artist, in an interview with
Hi-Fructose Magazine recalled a “professor’s advice to ‘not approach art
galleries too early because if you're going to have a baby, you're going to
stop making art’.”23 Other female artists gave up their children such as
Camille Billops (1933-2019) who left her daughter at an orphanage, when
she was four to pursue her artistic career 24 or decided not to have children
at all. In an interview with Red Online Magazine, perpetuating the idea that
women can not be both mother and artist, Tracy Emin is famously quoted as
saying “I don’t think I’d be making work (if I were a mother).” She admits,
I would have been either 100% mother or 100% artist. I’m not flaky
and I don’t compromise. Having children and being a mother… It

19

Phillips, 39 Ukeles, Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!

20

Kennedy, R. (2016). An Artist Who Calls the Sanitation Department Home - The New York Times
Though I have looked at several artists from varying communities and socioeconomic backgrounds,
a large proportion of my research has been conducted on Westernised women artists.
that have worked in the later half of the 20th century until present.
22
Artist and Mother, Artbound, Season 9 Episode 7, Public Media Group of Southern California, KCET,(2018)
23
Robertson, M. (2022). Hi-Fructose, The New Contemporary Art Magazine, 64 (Volume 64), Ema Shin
22–26. www.hifructose.com
24
Bonét, S. (2019). The Artist Who Gave Up Her Daughter.
https://www.topic.com/the-artist-who-gave-up-her-daughter
21

25

would be a compromise to be an artist at the same time. I know some
women can. But that’s not the kind of artist I aspire to be. There are
good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called
men.25
I have often questioned what my artistic practice would look like if my
husband and I had chosen to not have children. I don’t think not being a
mother would have made me a better artist, I think it would have made me
be a different one. Across fields, married, unmarried, mother or childless,
women are still fighting for equalities in the workforce, in the home and in
the other public realms. I believe my art practice would continue to reflect
those realities but through a different lens. Working against this kind of
public perception, much of my work addresses the inequality I experience
as a wife and mother26. Ultimately, I have made the choice to support my
husband and his desire to further his career ambitions at the cost of my
own. I made this decision because of his illness.
After receiving the devastating news of my husband’s diagnosis of
Huntington's Disease,27 we thought having children was lost to us. We had
no intention of bringing children into the world that would share his genetic
fate. However, with new medical technologies combined with Invitro
Fertilisation (IVF), it became possible to screen embryos before implanting
them (PGD, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis).28 So we made a conscious
25

Groskop, V. (2015). I am not flakey and I do not compromise. Red Online Magazine.
https://www.redonline.co.uk/red-women/interviews/a506662/tracey-emin-interview/
26
I don’t think not being a mother would have made me a better artist, I think it would have made me
be a different one.
27
Huntington's disease (HD) is a fatal genetic disorder that causes the progressive breakdown of
nerve cells in the brain. It deteriorates a person's physical and mental abilities usually during their
prime working years and has no cure. http://hdsa.org
28
Previously the options were to conceive children naturally and at 18 yrs old they could decide for
themselves to do the genetic test, or to guarantee that children of someone with HD did not have the
mutation involved having an in-utero test. To do the test you have to agree that if the embryo was
positive it would be aborted. In our community we have known people who have done one or the
other. Often those children grow up living with a parent with HD, watching them get sick and
eventually dying, wondering if they will have a similar outcome. We have known people who

26

decision to have children using this method. We even timed it so that if the
IVF-PGD round was successful, I wouldn't be heavily pregnant during my
last semester of school, and I would give birth months after I graduated.
However, nearly halfway through my second trimester at 20 weeks
gestation, I was hospitalised, and put on strict bed rest for the remainder of
the pregnancy. I graduated by proxy, missing the ceremony, celebrations
and graduation show. As my classmates moved on to their new endeavours,
my life became engulfed with the care and extra accommodation of my
newly born premature twins. I did not see a way to be an artist and a
mother,29 and it took me many years to return to meaningful creative
practice. Instead, between naps and feedings, I made a game of my
domestic duties with emphasis on cooking, then sewing, and even
experimenting with making my own household cleaners. I didn’t know it
then, but my domestic labour became the work. The simple things that I did
to keep myself engaged, relevant, and maintain a creative identity continue
to resonate and also inform my MFA research.

have had both positive and negative in-utero tests. I am pained when I think of the women who have
terminated their wanted pregnancies. It is unethical to have a minor tested for HD unless they are
showing signs of the disease, called Juvenile-HD. IVF-PGD also has its complications as a difficult
laborious procedure and can often be unsuccessful due to the nature of IVF and the additional 50%
risk factor of each embryo.
29
Because we lived in a small footprint, every space was dedicated to something. At one point I
worked under my bed that had hydraulic lifts to raise the mattress for easy storage access. It is where
I kept a printer, paints, drawing supplies and other small art making tools, as well as spare linens and
clothes. In another house, I made artwork in an uninsulated mudroom sharing space with shoes,
jackets and a double stroller.

27

Image removed.

Fig 6, Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1993
Janine Antoni is another artist that I admire as both a feminist and
someone who experiments with unconventional materials. While she
doesn’t have children, she does use gestures and actions as well as employ
a variety of non-traditional materials to convey meaning in her conceptual
practice. This is seen in her performance Loving Care (see Fig. 6). Working
with Natural Black Loving Care hair dye at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in
London, UK, Antoni used her hair as the mop and her body as a tool to paint
directly onto the floor. As the performance evolved and she took up more
space, the unpainted surface shrunk and the viewer needed to, ‘slowly
backing out of the gallery’30. Like Antoni, I physically place my body in
relation to many of my artworks, positioning myself on the floor hunched
over on hands and knees to mimic the gestures of housework labour such
as scrubbing, mopping, and sweeping.
30

“Loving Care”, 1993, Janine Antoni http://www.janineantoni.net date accessed 01/24/23

28

The final piece of the Kitchen Floor Series consists of the painting
Sweeping Meditation (See fig, 1.2) and accompanying videos. For the
Sweeping Meditations painting, a 4’x30’ scroll on paper, I used a regular
household broom with black Chinese ink to paint across a section of the roll
each day for a week. As the title suggests, I use the act of sweeping as a
type of meditation, to slow down and catch my breath between activities.
Most of the broom’s marks are done in a single motion but a few are short
and hurried as if I was concentrating on a single spot of dust. The ink I used
is very saturated, the strokes are thick and heavy but become lighter before
I reinked my broom and you can see the individual bristle marks as they are
pushed and pulled across the floor. Because of the nature of my application,
a day at a time and my limited availability of space, I was not able to view
the painting as it progressed. I could only see the one section of the current
day I was working on. I had no way of knowing what the painting would look
like when it was complete. As a result I was surprised when I unrolled it in
its entirety to discover that the ink had also captured the texture of my floor
and you can see the long linear lines run through the scroll from the
floorboard planks.
The videos show me in the act of cleaning my kitchen to make room
for the sections of Sweeping Meditation that I will make. Firstly, I need to
clean up from the previous night’s meal, and whatever new dishes that have
appeared from breakfast and lunch. Once the dishes have been done, I
sweep, sometimes vacuum, and mop the floor. To make the painting, on the
clean floor, I unroll a section of about 4 ft, from the scroll. Once I have
completed that day's section of Sweeping Meditations, it remains on the
floor to dry. It becomes an object that I have to navigate and work around as
I prep and make dinner. When it is dry, I roll up the scroll, put it away,
reorganise my kitchen to complete the last of the meal preparations. Often
the only witnesses to these activities are my cat and dog who walk in and
29

out of the frame unaware and oblivious. The intention of this documentation
was to show the daily rituals of domesticity and how entwined they are with
my art making practice. Additionally they show how the physical labour of
art making is often like the invisibility of domestic chores. One usually only
sees the end product, whether a clean home, a meal or a completed artwork
and not the activity of their making. There are seven days in total, about 16
hrs of video, edited, sped up and compressed into 6 hrs. You can see the
passage of time in the shadows that travel across the floor and through the
windows as the sun changes position throughout the day.
I first became interested in this way of working and documentation
when I watched Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy,
Working with time.31 a documentary of the artist as he creates large scale
sculptures in nature that erode with time. I am not saying this is similar to
Goldsworthy but it was his film that got me interested in time based
practices. My works are created in a private domicile and it is my physical
presence that measures the passage of time in a flurry of activity. Many of
his works are ephemeral and the only trace of his sculptures are the lasting
images in film or photographs. By contrast, I have tangible works on paper
of evidence of the time I have exerted as my output.
Working this way has allowed me to reflect on my process, and see
patterns start to emerge as I navigate my space. For example, how I order
my activities, how I contain and store my artwork and what I prioritise. At
times I am lost in the task at hand and forget I am filming, and other times I
am aware that I am also performing roles of homemaker and artist. The
cycle feels endless. Many years ago I was listening to a podcast and the
host was interviewing an author. I was in the midst of running my kiddos
around, trying to find time to do yoga, go grocery shopping, meal, get the
laundry done etc. This author was arguing that you have more time than you
31

Riedelsheimer et al

30

think, and he gave an example of pumping gas, or sitting at a light or time
you have in the morning before you get out of bed as minutes that you can
recapture to become more productive. After all “Remember time is Money”32
and wasting time is wasting a valuable commodity. And as someone that
needed to find more time in their day to get everything done it was a
potential strategy. I thought if I could be more efficient in other areas I could
be more productive in others33. By contrast I recently read How to do
Nothing: Resisting the attention economy. by author, artist Jenny Odell who
argues to sit in that quietness, “our constant engagement with the attention
economy means that it is something many of us may have to relearn.”34
Busyness does not always equal worth and finding moments to disengage
are just as valuable, potentially creating more time for creativity.

Work 2 Interruptions & Erasures

32

Benjamin Franklin
I found that I filled that ‘lost time’ with more of the ‘to do’ list and I wasn’t able to achieve the time I
desperately needed for my creative pursuits.
34
Odell, 16
33

31

One of my yoga instructors was talking about breath and how the inhale was to
lengthen… holding onto and appreciating the moment… capturing a second of
time and savouring it in suspension…
I have a box that I keep hidden away, it is unremarkable, purple, plastic,
small, the type you keep in a kitchen with recipes or miscellaneous odds
and ends you don’t quite know where they fit.
However, this box is full of words, I don’t know what they say anymore
but
I know who wrote them.
I keep them separate from the others, sealed.
They are my inhale.
I don’t open the box or read the words… I know it would hurt too much.
But there is another reason. Each time I open it a bit of her escapes. It’s
my way of keeping her earthbound. I can smell the patchouli, musk,
incense like it was yesterday but here and now. I can see all the
moments all at once, seconds stretched in suspension …
waiting for an exhale…
Megan H Carroll, Conversation with Sook-Yin Lee 2022

32

Fig. 7, Megan Carroll, Interruptions and Erasures, 2022/23, Embroidery on
cotton bed sheet approximately 8 ft circumference.

33

Fig. 9 and 10, Megan Carroll, Interruptions and Erasures, 2022/23,
Embroidery on cotton bedsheet, details 8’ in diameter

At first glance, Interruptions and Erasures (Interruptions for short) (see
Fig. 8), is circular 8’ in diameter charcoal grey textile, that is embroidered
with a satin stitch. A closer inspection reveals that more than one colour has
been used. There are seven different neural tones of tan and grey some of
which blend into one another while others almost disappear against the
textile itself. Much of the stitching ends before another colour begins, and
others are unfinished, with the embroidery thread left to hang.
Interruptions began as a way to document domestic labour and time.
The blocks of colour represent individual days where I sit for a duration of
time, usually midafternoon and embroider. This action ends when I am
interrupted for some reason. The more there is of a particular colour, the
longer I was able to work. When I am interrupted, I simply stop and knot it
off. If the interruption was abrupt, I let the unfinished thread hang. Each
34

colour is assigned a day and I may be interrupted for extended periods or
unable to return to my sewing for a duration so will I pick up again on the
day of the corresponding colour.
Repetition can be particularly useful as a learning tool to commit
things to memory, however it requires practice, patience and duration.
Similarly neuroscientists say about the brain “Cells that fire together, wire
together”35, “meaning that cells in frequent communication with one another
strengthen the connections between themselves, which helps both cells
survive and thrive”,36 reinforcing that pathway. In the workplace it is
acquiring the knowledge and skills to do your job well that is then rewarded
with a pay cheque, or a promotion. But what if it is done in the home, what
then? I am not learning a new skill, I am just doing the same things over and
over again, it’s as if my brain isn’t firing during these activities, there is
reinforcement of skill, but no growth.
I purposefully use neutral tones on the grey background to represent
invisible labour in the domestic sphere. As days run into one another and
become blurred, so do the colours in Interruptions, much like T.S. Eliot's
phrase “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” in his poem A Love
Song for J.Alfred Prufrock,1963.37 Whereas spoons represent monotony
and repetition, the embroidered stitches represent monotony and repetition
as well as duties and tasks. In the 19th century embroidery “came to be
seen as correct drawing room behaviour,... [and] convey the special social
and psychological attributes required of a lady”38 such as femininity, duty
and purity. Embroidery was a way to occupy a woman’s time, to keep them
engaged and prevent them from unsavoury behaviours.

35

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory
Text message with Jeff Carroll, PhD.
37
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock
Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963)
38
Parker (152)
36

35

As much as Interruptions is a work about the consistent and relentless
invisible labour that is performed in the domestic sphere, it is also about the
embodiment of memory. It is my belief that fibres39 hold memory, and we
use them as a way to connect with memory. As long as I can remember I
have been interested in sewing and have taken many classes throughout
the years to expand and build my skills. At some point, an instructor said to
me “Fabric has memory.”40 What they meant is that it will hold onto folds;
wear and tear, don’t iron, press, and be mindful of care, all of these things
damage the fibres and like a crumpled up piece of paper, you can never
make it completely flat again. Instead what I heard was that fabric is a living
thing, made up of cells that have their own unique characteristics. These
many fibres form textiles that then take on personalities and will remember
the bodies of those that inhabit them, by holding creases or wearing thin
with heavy use. The fabric I chose for this piece is a repurposed bed sheet.
My interest in saving it from the landfill was that much of it was intact, only
torn and worn soft from our bodies, mine and my husband’s. As I worked
with the bedsheet, I started to think about how it has witnessed different
emotions, such as love, loss, passion, frustration and ambivalence. The
fibres have trapped pieces of DNA from sweat, tears and skin. When I touch
it, I can feel the density of the weave. I know that if it is soft, torn and pilly, it
was mostly likely from my husband’s side of the bed. If it had moderate
wear but still intact, it was from my side of bed. The areas that showed the
least amount of use were the foot of the bed on my side, with the edges of
the fabric protected from use where they were tucked under the mattress. It
even has a faint smell to it, of repetitive washing and hints of body odour. Art
Historian and contemporary art curator Helen Molesworth claims, “The
Fibre - a thread or filament from which a vegetable tissue, mineral substance, or textile is formed.
Oxford English Dictionary
40
I don’t remember who it was that said it to me but it was during a workshop in Vancouver, BC in
1998.
39

36

nontraditional materials have meaning and when they are used those
meanings are in play”.41 This resonates deeply with me as I hold
Interruptions in my hands on a regular basis.
Because I work on it most days, it has become a living document,
changing and growing with each stitch and shift in coloured thread. The
stitches take on my day, mood and attention. They are tight and evenly
spaced when I have more time, haphazard and loose when I am in a rush,
or slightly crooked and uneven if distracted. This piece began as a way for
me to visually represent the work that I do in the home, but has evolved into
something more. I now notice my reactions to it. Some days I am excited
and will sit happily stitching, imagining the outcome, other days I am bored
or restless. At times I am resentful of it, and question my choice of project,
materials and method. Artist Beverly Ayling-Smith wrote in her PhD
dissertation, Connecting with the viewer – affectivity and cathexis in textile
artwork 2019, “This paper investigates how cloth can be used in textile
artwork to make a connection with this unresolved mourning and thereby
contribute to the progression of the viewer’s work of mourning.” She
continues, “The importance placed on clothes and other textiles belonging
to the deceased in these processes42 would suggest that the role of cloth in
the working through feelings and the part textile artwork can play in the
materialisation and facilitation of the work”. Unlike Ayling-Smith who is
using her work to process emotions of grief of the deceased, I am using
Interruptions to process the imminent death of my husband. Interruptions is
ever present in my life, not far from my thoughts, similar to my feelings of
resentment and frustration about my husband’s disease, the bed sheet that
we shared has become a transitional object,43 a stand in for the person he
41

Artist and Mother, Artbound, Season 9 Episode 7, Public Media Group of Southern California,
KCET,(2018)
42
Ayling-Smith is referring to the stages of Grief-work defined by Freud
43
The term transitional object was coined in 1951 by Donald Winnicott as a designation for any
material object (typically something soft—a piece of cloth, say, or part of a plush toy) to which an

37

was44. My aim is that when the viewer discovers the story behind the work,
they might better understand my ongoing attention and persistence with the
textile and its subtle interruptions of coloured thread.

Image removed.

Fig. 10, Beverly Ayling-Smith Cloth and Memory, 2012

infant attributes a special value and by means of which the child is able to make the necessary shift
from the earliest oral relationship with the mother to genuine object-relationships.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/trans
itional-object
44
As I write this, the disease is slowly progressing and my husband is not the same person he was a
short while ago.

38

Fig. 11, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022
Various Size, Embroidery Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or
Cotton

39

Fig. 12, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022
Various Size, Embroidery Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or
Cotton

Fig. 13, Megan Carroll, Acts of Care 2022
Various Size, Embroidery Thread, Gouache, Flame, Sandpaper on Linen or
Cotton
40

Work 3 Acts of Care
We don’t say the CURE word in our house, there is no cure, there is hope
but no cure. We often say it is the C word. We never tell people there is a
CURE. Then I got cancer (another famous C word) and for that, there is a
Cure and I am Cured.
My Husband is not Cured and will not be in his lifetime Cured. He is
always going to have Huntington’s Disease, it will be what kills him.
But before that all the things he is, will be a memory of mine.
Long before the dance45 ends, his memories will be my memories, hopes
and dreams, family and adventure will be gone to him. I will hold the
hand of the man that I shared kisses with, and I will be his memory, the
meals we shared, the champagne we drank, the travels we did, and our
children.
I will hold his hand the way he did mine.
Megan H Carroll, Virtual Studio Blog post 2022

People with Huntington disease develop involuntary jerking or twitching movements known as
chorea. As the disease progresses, these movements become more pronounced. Affected individuals
may have trouble walking, speaking, and swallowing.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/huntington-disease/
45

41

Acts of Care, another C word (see Fig. 12,13,14) is a series of small
embroideries done on pieces of linen or cotton, the same ones used in
Interruptions. I enjoy working with these reclaimed textiles: they have their
own embodied significance and emotional weight. There are 10 pieces in
the Acts of Care series. Three of them are shown above. I use a simple
repetitive line called a running stitch, the kind you find on many styles of
visible mending such as Boro46, Sashiko47, and Kantha48. By replicating the
same motion over and over the threads build up and strengthen the existing
textile creating a newer reinforced surface. It is my intention to reinforce and
preserve both the textile and their attached memories..
With Acts of Care, I use a blue cotton thread in a circular motion
building out from a small hole accentuated by a gold patch. The patch is
placed below the tear, to call attention to the edges of top fabric. In the Acts
of Care Series I often use gold to accent a repair. And as noted earlier, the
gold calls attention to the care put into the ordinary overlooked acts of
domesticity. This is a carry over from my ceramic instruction and aligns with
the ideas of Wabi-Sabi49 and Kintsugi50. For me the gold adds preciousness
and value inviting closer inspection. The blue is also informed by my
ceramic education. The hue I use is often described as Indigo. This is one of
the oldest dyes for textiles and probably the most pervasive: the process
46

Boro are a class of Japanese textiles that have been mended or patched together.The term is
derived from the Japanese term "boroboro", meaning something tattered or repaired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boro_(textile)
47
Sashiko (Little Stabs) is a type of traditional Japanese embroidery or stitching used for the
decorative and/or functional reinforcement of cloth and clothing. Owing to the relatively cheap nature
of white cotton thread and the abundant nature of cheap, indigo-dyed blue cloth in historical Japan,
sashiko has a distinctive appearance of white-on-blue embroidery, though some decorative pieces
may also use red thread. (cite)
48
Kantha also spelled kanta, and qanta, is a type of embroidery craft in the Bangladesh and eastern
regions of India, particularly in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Odisha. (cite)
49
There appears to be no one clear definition of Wabi-Sabi, the way I understand it, it is a humble
aesthetic of appreciation of Wabi- a feeling of loneliness, distress or abandonment combined with
Sabi- decay, temporal
50
Kintsugi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with
lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum; it treats breakage and repair as part
of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

42

appears to have been independently discovered “at different times, across
the world”51. I am drawn to it not only because of its historical lineage but the
colour blue carries with it many connotations. It is extremely rare in the
natural world yet is a beloved colour as it reminds us of the vastness of
bodies of water and the sky.
With Acts of Care, (see Fig. 12), I burned a hole by holding a flame
just below the fabric that smouldered until it caught the flame that I then
snuffed out, creating an irregular shape. It has hard brittle edges that cast a
shadow on the gold patch below the damaged fabric. Using grey thread on
the grey fabric, I stitched carefully to avoid the burned edges. I use the
same burning technique. When I snuffed out the flame I had two holes. This
time I cleaned up the edges and carefully stitched around the two until they
ran into one another. The more I stitched the more circular it became.The
resulting shape reminds me of a dividing cell much like an embryo.
With all the pieces in the Acts of Care series, I employ a simple
repetitive stitch, the kind you find on many styles of Japanese visible
mending. By replicating the same motion over and over the threads build up
and strengthen the existing textile creating a newer reinforced surface. The
repetitive stitches are reminiscent of steps and paths, similar to the rows
and columns in WWU Steps. Once again as with Interruptions I am using
grey on grey to visually work with ideas of blending in and invisibility. One
grey subtly runs into the other so you don’t always see where one ends and
another begins. Making these pieces, using repetition and pattern, was
again a way of bringing content and actions from paid work into my art
practice.
Many fibre based artists I have encountered in my research about the
history of textiles use embroidery to speak to maintenance, repair and
51

St Clair. 189

43

reuse, not only of clothing and other textiles but as “an act of care” through
a social practice. Make Thrift Mend was a project started by Katerina
Rodabaugh in 2013 to not buy new clothing for an entire year. This has
since become a lifestyle. She explains in her book Mending Matters (See
Fig. 14) that this slow fashion guide for a well loved wardrobe, was
influenced by the high cost of fashion, such as the ecological impact of
textile waste on the planet and events such as “the Rana Plaza garment
factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 workers and
injuring 2,500 more.”52 She compares “fast fashion” to “fast food”, and asks
her readers to slow down on the consumption, realign and reconsider where
textiles are sourced and the garment industries practices. As someone that
loves clothes and has had a lifelong sewing practise her approach
resonates with me.

Images Removed.

Fig. 14, Mending on denim with various denim patches and stitches,
hand-stitched Photo Credit, Katrina Rodabaugh

52

Rodabaugh,19

44

Another artist I am interested in that uses mending as a form of
personal expression is Molly Martin, author and illustrator of The Art of
Repair: Mindful mending: how to stitch old things to new life.

Image Removed.

Fig. 15 Molly Martin, Sketches for her book Mindful Mending
What drew me to her work was how she uses mending as a metaphor
of care. She speaks about giving articles of textiles new life and purpose.
This is something that I think about a lot in my relationship with my husband.
In a way I am attempting to mend and maintain aspects of him so that I can
extend his life for as long as possible. Many of our decisions have been to
give him space to grow and flourish, to reach his maximum potential before
his disease erodes his brain at which point it will be my job to patch and
mend the pieces that are left.
Mending acts to repair something that is broken or damaged in order
to extend its use. I use the term care as an active response to sustaining
and maintaining that which needs repair, giving care as an act of

45

preservation and improvement. This allows for greater connection to the
environment as well with others such as my immediate community (family,
friends and peers) and beyond such as the invisible labourers whose
energies went into the linens and cottons I use. First the natural materials
were harvested, then spun into fibres, creating threads to be woven into the
fabrics. In a sense these unknown and often underpaid persons who are
mostly women53 are my collaborators. They have their own memories and
experiences that leave traces of themselves on the raw fabric or garment
and without them, my practice would not be possible. When I reuse and
keep textiles from the landfill I am attempting to pay my respect to them. It is
also no secret that the garment industry accounts for “92 million tonnes of
garbage in our landfills, and contributes up to 20% of our global waste a
year.”54 This is in addition to the deplorable conditions that many of these
workers live and endure such as the circumstances that led to the collapse
of the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Therefore I feel it is my
responsibility to these unnamed persons to reuse and repurpose as much
as possible, it is not only care for my belongings, but also to care for my
environment, and others.

53

Women still hold most of the labour that is ‘considered’ less skill. Men hold positions of authority
and jobs that are more mechanised. Of those working, women do more domestic labour and sleep
less. (Zaman,2020)
54
https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/

46

Conclusion
This thesis delves into the profound impact of organising my life and artistic
practice around the realities of my personal experiences, specifically the
challenges of raising a family while navigating decisions we have made to
accommodate my husband in relation to his illness. These circumstances
have not only shaped our motivations as a couple but have also defined my
roles as a wife and mother, the complex birth of my two children and the
imminent disease and eventual loss of my husband have directly framed
and influenced this Thesis Project. Through this exploration, I have
demonstrated how these transformative events have fundamentally altered
my artistic practice and, in turn, have shaped my identity as an artist.
I believe my artwork will speak to others that have experienced or
contemplated the challenges of domesticity in their own lives such as
monotony, repetition, combined with the emotions of grief, loss, frustration,
born from lived experiences. They are sensitive to feminist issues such as
the inequality that women still face in both domestic spheres and the labour
force55. . My viewer recognises the emotional depth and care that is
conveyed through domestic and traditionally feminine activities through my
use of materials, methods and tools. I want my viewers to feel the intimacy
of the gesture and mark making as they contemplate their own relationships
with these activities. By using humble methods and materials that are often
55

According to Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development, OCED.stat, on average in
Canada men spend 2.46 hours and women spend 3.72 hours on unpaid labour. In the United States
of America 2.76 hours a day for men and women 4.64 hours on unpaid labour. These statistics did not
define the types of activities or the further breakdown of communities within the two countries.

47

overlooked or repurposed my aim is that the viewers find beauty in the
ordinary and appreciate the complexities and nuances of everyday life.
Exhibition Installation and Thesis Defence Reflections
I like many of my 2023 cohort and others before us, entered into the
Masters of Fine Arts degree with one set of ideals and aspirations. As I
progressed in the program my ideas and goals shifted in ways that I would
not and could not have predicted. I am not sure if it was because I deferred
for a year but I had a monumental shift in the way I conceived and executed
my art over this past year (late 2022/2023). With that came a clarity to the
direction I wanted to pursue for my thesis exhibition and supporting
document.
In preparation for the exhibition, I made many pieces of art
experimenting with what had the most impact. I was able to figure out what
was working for me and what was not. Initially I thought I was going to use
all of them as a collection that would represent my overarching themes of
domesticity and gender roles. As I started compiling and editing, along with
advice from my supervisor, instructors, cohort and external influences the
plan of showing it all started to shift and I saw how I could boldly represent
my concepts by showing fewer but more decisive pieces.
Talking about the artwork and hearing others speak to it, indicated that
my intentions for it were mostly understood. I appreciated other people’s
insights and reflections and the connections that they made to it in their own
lives.
I felt like the experience of considering and curating the artworks that I
created during my degree was enlightening and I learned what was
successful and what I could do better next time. Such as I was disheartened
that I could not get my video to work as intended and the main gallery space
48

lights were not on. I felt that the video would have given the viewers more
insight into Sweeping Meditation and the lighting gave the impression that
that area was closed and separate from the main exhibition. Because of this
more than once I had to remove sandwich boards, garbage bags and other
abandoned items that obstructed the view of my artwork.
I found the support document to be a challenge. Through this
process I discovered my mode of writing is more narrative and
autoethnographic, academic writing does not come easily for me. I needed
to find strategies to combine both types of writing to fulfil the written part of
my degree. Finding a balance I was able to combine storytelling with
research that supported my ideas and themes. I do feel that there is more
room to expand and flesh out my ideas. As I write more and continue my
research I hope to use the skills that I have started to build through this
process to make my writing stronger. As I read and reflect I am seeing
obvious areas of strength and weakness.
I sincerely thank and appreciate my Defence Comittee’s insight into
my work and the thoughtful questions and concerns that they brought up. I
found the process reflective and challenging. For the most part I sensed that
the themes of my thesis were received well and the criticism valid,
especially about privilege and means. This indicated to me I did not specify
my intention as clearly as I needed to in both my artwork and the supporting
document. It is my intention to do more research to listen, to observe and
include a diverse range of voices in future endeavours.
There were a couple of noted comments- both made by Ingrid Koenig,
that I felt were openings for great discussions if we had more time. The first
about what I perceived as privilege and the comment about my appliances.
And the second about economy and worth. I was not expecting a question
about my home. Yes it is nice and I have amassed a collection of
appliances, I recognized my knee jerk answer was to justify and explain
49

rather than think about the deeper meaning of that comment and though I
have thought about race and privilege throughout the course of the degree I
should have been more prepared for it. I am still thinking about her use of
the word economy- there could be multiple ways that that word was
intended, as in, there is a labour force that I could theoretically hire to do the
jobs I don’t want to do. Or, what is my income for performing this labour,
was it a reference to the Wages for Housework movement in the early
1970’s? Is it the beautiful home I have now, it is about sacrifice and worth? I
believe her intention behind that word was a bit of all of that, and that is why
my response surprised me and I want to explore deeper- The word I heard
myself say and resonate with me was “guilt”.
There is so much to reflect on about the entire process, my
experiences continue to shape me and I would like to continue delving into
the themes of domesticity, labour and gender roles. Having such a diverse
cohort and learning about their practices and positionality was eye-opening.
I saw many of the same themes and over laps but from different vantage
points. Moving forward I would like to find ways that can honour multiple
stories from different backgrounds, that includes race, class and other
marginalised communities. I will also continue to expand upon my own
narrative especially as I start the shift from one type of caregiver to another
as my husband’s illness progresses. This may include employing similar
materials and methods but also seeking out opportunities to expand my
practice. I also hope that I can find ways to curate and work with other
artists to expand how art is viewed and accessed outside of a traditional
gallery space.

50

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