Too Much to Carry: A Piece of Women’s Work
She sits at the dining room table and stares at a vase of freshly cut flowers. They are replaced daily, perpetually reborn—she isn’t sure how long this will last, so these flowers have to last forever, eternally blooming, eternally new, so flippantly alive. Underneath a string of pearls, a lump forms in her throat. There are marbles in her stomach. There are clusters of white light in her head, loud and aching. Every day she repeats this motion, back and forth, over and under, disappearing dust and making clean from chaos, lighting candles and fluffing pillows. Perfection is a simple task, isn’t it? Easy. One wrong move, one skipped stitch, one snag, and the candles burn themselves into a puddle, the crumbs on the countertop are deafening, the crooked hem of her dress could kill. Perfection is easy for a few weeks, a few months, a few years. Forever? Easy.
The goal of “women’s work” has long been perfection: weaving linen, crocheting doilies, and knitting sweaters leave no room for error. One skipped stitch, one snag, and the craft is compromised, the maker must rip out stitches and unravel thread and try again. For many years, my grandmother’s married life was like this: perfection was the minimum requirement, the baseline, the norm. She had been told her husband had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, that he could die at any moment, that becoming aware of his own mortality would surely kill him. The life they had built was on borrowed time; what could she do but make it as beautiful as possible? Fresh-cut flowers in every room and candle-lit dinners every night became prayers, rituals, offerings to a husband oblivious to his own body’s rapid decay. My piece is woven, a common process in “women’s work,” using uniform thread and pattern, forcing any imperfection to be easily spotted. This recreates my grandmother’s experience: knowing her husband’s prognosis and being unable to tell him, being the perfect wife under the gray cloud of his impending death.
Forever seems simple. All she has to do is keep the flowers blooming, keep the pearls on her neck, keep the smile on her lips. There is something held secret at the corners of her mouth, something that, if revealed, could collapse her life and kill her love. Eighteen months turn to six, to two, to none with a misplaced word. Better to stay silent, stay smiling, keep the marbles running through her head and chest and stomach.
There is something simple yet secretive about the fiber arts. The process can be easily followed with the eyes or the fingertips: over and under, up and up and up. And yet, there is so much mess tucked away behind the curtain of interlocking threads. Perfect French knots emerge from the grid like roses, like tumors, like cysts, spherical and singular. These textures mimic both the disease my grandfather suffered and the ulcers my grandmother developed during this stressful period of her life. Underneath the clusters and clots, yarn is knotted and connected, frayed and broken. It hangs loose and pulls tight over vast expanses of fabric. All of this clutter, deemed confusing and unsightly, is hidden away. Behind my grandmother’s smile, she hid the loose ends and broken threads of her husband’s illness for decades, afraid the strain of his prognosis would cause him to snap like a taut fiber. She hid every frayed edge as she continued to wear away.
I have created the fabric using an even, open weave that mirrors the materiality of gauze, waiting to wrap a gaping wound. Blood has seeped into the fibers, soaked and then rewoven. Some spots fade to the background as if they have been present for years. Others are bright red and tacky, fresh tragedies randomly scattered across the flesh-colored expanse. These visceral elements lay bare a story of hope and grief spanning fifty-nine years, an amount of time no doctor could predict my grandfather would live. He survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma, only to face a myriad of hardships: cancer, pneumonia, stroke, heart problems, decreased mobility. With each new red dot, his wife would grieve, forced to ready herself for a day she had expected since 1959.
My grandmother’s own words, floating above the stitches and hiding amongst the knots, give the piece a voice. The clusters of texture surrounding the phrase “carrying all of this” not only provide contrast and visual interest, but also visibly characterize the burden she carried, the accumulation of worry and heartbreak and hurt over decades of seemingly mandatory perfection. Fragments of quotes combine to describe the space in which she existed: not quite living, not yet dead.
In this piece, I provide a visual representation of my grandfather’s disease and my grandmother’s experience using the artistic vernacular of “women’s work” as process, medium, and narrative element. I employ aesthetically appealing, conceptually grotesque imagery and textures that tempt viewers to touch the piece, yet warn them to stay away. Behind this disease is a history of grief; behind this weaving is a mess of loose ends; behind my grandfather is a woman who has held the weight of his life upon her shoulders for so long, it feels weightless.
About the Artist
Brooks Eisenbise is a writer and artist whose work explores memory, ritual, and personal history. Her fiber arts pieces combine visceral, visually interesting textural elements with dark, intense subject matter to create objects that tempt viewers to touch while warning them to keep their distance. Carrying All of This resides in this space between intimacy and aversion, materiality and concept. The wall hanging is inspired by her grandmother’s stories of struggle and heartbreak as she coped with her husband’s Hodgkin’s lymphoma early in their marriage. Eisenbise employs the ancient visual vernacular of handcraft to examine themes of femininity, monotony, and unrealistic standards of perfection.