Artist, Harmony Hammond: Working with fabric and sewing techniques, it was just in the air at the time. And there were many of us doing it because of their gendered associations.
Hi, I’m Harmony Hammond. I am an artist and this is a work by the artist Rosemary Mayer.
In the early ‘70s, I rented a third-floor loft at 87 Bowery just off of Canal Street. I walled off an area to sublet to another artist and this is the space that I rented to Rosemary. When she worked on a major piece like Galla Placidia, it took up the whole space. And Rosemary’s bed was right underneath her artwork. That’s where she slept.
Rosemary was primarily buying cheap fabric and then dyeing her fabrics. She had big pots of dye on my little kitchen stove, and she had hot plates going in her space. Usually big pieces of fabric simmering there, so she could get just the right nuanced colors that she wanted.
Rosemary draped these fabrics over bent wood. Oftentimes, she was using transparent fabrics with an opaque fabric inside, so the feeling was very much like you might be looking into the body interior. I forgot how overt this soft, abstract, vaginal form that’s there. It’s large, it’s delicate, it’s vulnerable.
The pieces always touched the ground. They weren’t just diaphanous flowing fabric pieces. They were here, they were grounded, and they took up space. The sculpture’s title refers to a Roman empress and it was about women taking and occupying space.