Emily Frances Carrasco

With a BFA in Textile Design and a focus in Fiber Sculpture, I live in a constant bed of party supplies; quite the happy mess of materials. As a child I wanted to color the world, consuming things with pattern. This inclination never quite left me. I began playing with the technique of creating handmade rope and twining various materials together to determine the outcome. Eventually it became a cathartic release and acted as a party or a celebration of a feeling that I was expressing. Through the process of creating this series of work, my connection with color, glitter, texture and pattern was now tangible. I was physically working on and hand producing all the things I felt nostalgically connected to. They call it, \"Swimming in the head\" is a body of work that focuses on re-creating and building atmospheres within gallery spaces that do not exist in reality. My work provides for the audience a chance to escape into a different world; my personal \"utopian\" reality. It is intended to make you feel as if you are physically as well as emotionally leaving behind a world of familiarity and entering into something unusual and fantastical. I wanted to recreate my home away from home. I am what you would call an \"escape artist,\" manipulating a space in order to replace what it is with what I want it to be. These pieces act as a symbol for something unusual growing in a space it does not belong in.