Pantyhose

Growing up in a household with biologists as parents, this piece was inspired by their environmental take on childhood arts and crafts.  A fun and easy party favor, we used to take knee-high stockings and make “Wilson heads”, planting grass seeds as hair and adorning them with googley-eyed faces.  I wanted to take this controlled growth to another level with the creation of a life-sized human frame. Essentially a corporeal plant bed, this piece can be read as a meditation on the impermanence of life.  I aim to implore the viewer to recognize their own transitory existence, as well as that of the life and accompanying death that surrounds them. The placement of the piece in a common space a reflection on the unexpectedness death can have.  This piece can also be viewed as a more biological or spiritual piece in its tie between humanity and nature. The dynamic ever-changing nature of this piece in the life and death of the soil and seed that compose the substance of the interior, as well as the decomposition of the form as a whole reinforce these associations and embolden the piece with a life cycle of it’s own. 

As I had begun with pantyhose of all different colors, I wanted to try and unify the colors more so that they were not only somewhat believable as a skintone but also more earthy. To do this I used a Rit brand dye remover. Following the directions on the package, I simmered the water and then stirring the powder in. I added the pantyhose next, allowing enough room for movement. This process was repeated multiple times as I had many pantyhose to do, but seemed to work better in batches as the dye leaked into the water and began to tint the pantyhose a copper color when left in too long. This process took about an hour in total. 

After all the darker pantyhose had been through the removal process they needed to be soaked and washed before any further dying could take place. Each individual garnment took on a different shade of light peach-beige. I'd never used this product previously so did not know what to expect but thought that the lighter color would be a good place to start as it was more similar to the other colors now. Washing the dye out took twenty minutes. 

 After stripping the color from the darker pantyhose I began to dye all of them using a beige Rit dye. This process was very similar to that of removing the color except they were not to be simmered on the stove, just sitting in hot water. Each batch took a different amount of time to complete as the starting point of the color was not the same for all. I did six batches of dyeing, in total taking about an hour and a half. As before the dyed nylon had to be rinsed through both warm and cold water and then washed before use. This took an additional half an hour. Upon completion the pantyhose remained in a set of varing shades but I think their closer similarity helped in creating less of a patchwork appearance.

I used the knee-high stockings to make the hands and feet. In order to make fingers and toes, I used my own body to hold the shape of the fabric, and sewed the nylon into the shapes so that it would hold up. This took nearly an hour for each appendage but was the best way to do this as I wanted to make the body life-sized. Assembling the body did not take long. I used a pair of tights as they were designed for the legs, cutting the feet off. The arms were each one leg of a pair of stockings, the chest composed of a few pieces. I sewed each piece together as I went, as stuffing the fabric would have grown more complicated working through the fabric of the entire body rather than that immediate part.

As the body was now laid out the next step was to begin stuffing the pieces. I used dampened potting soil to fill the pantyhose and sprinkled rye grass seed generously at the top of each piece. It became increasingly important to stuff each piece individually from the bottom up as it allowed me to secure the soil as much as possible, as well as ensured i could reach back as far as I needed to to spread the seed. In total I used nearly 100 pounds of potting soil and spent twenty four hours in construction of the body itself. The next phase of this project was a more passive traditional plant care regimen of sunlight and water.

I am really satisfied with how this project transpired. For future constructions I will now know to trim all of the stockings, as the tighter they are the better they held the soil in place. Transportation of this piece was rather difficult, a lot of its original shape and stability were lost in the relocation, so I now know to build all such pieces on site to prevent such damage.

I wanted to include an example of one of the stages this piece will cycle through, as the grass has grown. Pictured on the right is an example of the craft that inspired this piece, as they would typically include faces on the side, the grass acting as hair. This particular piece from planting is shown at ten days growth.