January Release: Untangle Series
This year I am going to make a small collection of works every month and release the works for sale here on my website. Each collection will include works on paper, textiles, and/or works on canvas. Creating these smaller works will allow me needed breaks form my larger Toto with Moon series and my woven soft sculptures. It will also help me practice photographing, writing about, and selling my work.
Here is my first release:
Untangled_Stephanie Eche-2.jpg
01.2021 | What does it mean to untangle?
For me, untangling is something that I do daily to my hair, my necklaces, and to my thoughts. This past year has been a rollercoaster of emotion—not just because of COVID-19 and Trump, but also because of my own personal triumphs and trials, love and loss. You’ve probably had your own personal ups and downs that have shaped how you’ve dealt with the larger issues at hand.
As a woman of color, who recently married a white, Jewish man, I’ve also been untangling what it means to be Chicana, what it means to be a wife, what it means to create a home, and what it means to plan for an uncertain future. I left corporate America partly because I was sick of being the only brown woman in the room, now being a brown woman of certain means and access, I know I need to be in the room, just on my own terms and in my own manner.
I don’t think this collection is specifically about being a woman of color in 2021, but it is about how I am dealing with the realization that we are all dealing with trauma and stress, some of us more than others. This impacts how we communicate, connect, and behave.
We are all untangling: virtually through screens, behind masks at the grocery store, silently in the shower, behind tears in the bedroom, or alone in a hospital bed.
In this collection, I use color and form to visualize the interconnections we have with each other. I consider my imagery thought-shapes (in reference to John Wyndham’s science fiction novel The Chrysalids).
We may not be able to physically see each other or communicate in person, but we are connected and collectively we are untangling.