J. Morgan Puett | Home | Cottage Industry
Sarah Sophia Turner, costume designer and stitcher Athens, GA Photography by Simon Upton The cottage owners: EstherChandler, Rebecca Campbell, Catherine Braxton Photography by Simon Upton Rebecca Campbell Room, aka The Sewing Parlor Photography by Simon Upton Esther Chandler Room, aka The Pattern Parlor/ Computer Room Photography by Simon Upton Eliza Lucas Pinckney Room, aka The Dye Kitchen Photography by Simon Upton Photography by Simon Upton Photography by Simon Upton Willis Johnson Room, aka The Studio/Bedroom Photography by Simon Upton Photography by Simon Upton Ursula Arsenault, artist and stitcher, Chicago, IL Photography by Simon Upton		Cottage Industry Evoking Histories: Memory of Water; Spoleto USA, Charleston, SC, 2002 Co-curators: Mary Jane Jacob and Tumelo Musako and Sarah Carrington. At the corner of Calhoun and East Bay, in a house built in 1852 and which has been home to three different families, I have re-created the universe of a garment industry, in a domestic format long lost, but with particular resonances in this Southern atmosphere. 35 Calhoun: An introduction to "Cottage Industry" by curator Mary Jane Jacob "Puett draws from a deep local rootedness of history and imagery to evoke, through textiles, stories of feminine pursuits at home, women's work and roles, and industrial sites of exploitation." J. Morgan Puett has developed a unique artistic practice that negotiates the disparate territories of fashion, architecture, and fine art. Her art involves complete systems of production, developed in response to historical and contemporary issues around commerce, history, and labor. Puett's approach to revealing how textiles shape identity and convey meaning can be seen in The Manhattan Tartan Project (1999) in which she created a demographic chart as textile pattern. Transforming this traditional motif intended to show groupings among families or clans in Scotland, Puett collaborated with artist Suzanne Bocanegra on two new tartans: one reflecting the household income distribution of New York, another corresponding to the city's ethnic makeup. In Cottage Industry Puett draws from a deep local rootedness of history and imagery to evoke, through textiles, stories of feminine pursuits at home, women's work and roles, and industrial sites of exploitation. For this project she takes female garments through making and through history -- from designing to dyeing to sewing to marketing, from the 18th century to the present -- employing extensive research and extended collaborations with artists and others from the city and region. It centers on the creation of a multi-class, multi-part garment with which she pieces together missing social histories. Based on museum sources, local architectural details, and everyday textiles, her "products" are a line of women's clothing for sale and a pattern for popular consumption to do-it-yourself. Workers are on view daily in a "performative" workshop that "exhibits" the process of garment preparation and invites viewers to engage in art and art production in the course of everyday life experience. Collaborating with David Lang and Wilson Fontaine, Puett also introduces a sound element on the exterior and in the interior spaces, respectively. Unlike the typical upbeat music used by retailers, the works of these composers create an atmosphere of slowing down, as when one walks through water, stimulating not consumption but contemplation, and bringing the visitor deeper into the palpable experience of the multiple histories on display. Sited at 35 Calhoun Street in a Charleston single-style house at the corner of Calhoun and East Bay Streets, this project is also a collaboration with owners Rebecca Campbell and Catherine Braxton, who trace their family from this site (formerly called "The Borough," an African-American section of Ansonborough), on which their house is one of the few remaining 19th-century structures, and who also trace ancestral ties back to slaves at Drayton Hall. The garment elements fabricated include: a series of stomachers, each uniquely embroidered (one with a map of Charleston c. 1750, another with scenes from local legends, and so forth); an 18th-century pocket, an accessory tied around the waist and used by all classes and races of women; a slave apron adapted for contemporary use; a sleeve from Eliza Lucas Pinckney's 18th-century silk dress for which she raised the silk worms in the Lowcountry; and an early 18th-century crouchless undergarment ("Bonney breeches") attributed to female pirate. In addition, some of the fabrics used are newly produced, such as: a quilted textile whose design is based on the architectural sunburst motif on a mantelpiece at 35 Calhoun; and an indigo-dyed homespun of wool-and-linen (called "linsey-woolsey") whose weave is based on the wandering vine motif found in an early 19th-century slave-made and slave-used coverlet at the Charleston Museum. These modules and others make up this versatile garment-outfit that will also eventually exist in sixteen different patterns or styles. Born in Hahira, Georgia, in 1957, Puett received her Masters in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1985. From 1993-1997 she ran "J. Morgan Puett, Inc.," a multi-disciplinary project that took the form of a small business in New York's SoHo, and other collaborative ventures with artists and designers; from 1998-2001 she collaborated on a New York-based experimental, retail-clothing manufacturing project. Her art has recently been shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery, New York; she is currently working on a collaborative project with Mark Dion for the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. www.spoletousa.org