“The excessive fabric that can be obtained by one person is astounding, and as more and more of it accumulated in my own studio there came a point where I decided to stop trying to find just the right thing to make out of each piece. Almost two years ago I started composting kitchen waste with worms, and since then I’ve aspired to be more like them in the studio. They break down whatever scraps and waste they’re given and create balanced fertilizer.
How would worms make quilts?
How would they choose the fabric?
What patterns would they prefer?
With this work I'm trying to deal with this excess by emulating a repetitive and non-hierarchical logic that is more like composting then composition. The quilted polyester lining is right up against wool boucle that someone paid $200/yard for. Their patterns are compressed and expanded in a technique that relates to the logic of digital imaging as much as biologic and geologic processes.
The materials are clothes I’ve stopped wearing as I transition, dismantled clothes from my ex and my friends, pieces of fabric my mom has kept in her stash since I was a child, and scraps from my current employment in an upholstery workshop. Some of the fabric is deeply emotionally resonant for me, but some isn’t at all, and I combine them.
In 100 million years we will all be dead, and there will be beautiful marble deep in the earth that contains every color of microplastic embedded in its veins. “ ⏤ Finch
Sydney Finch is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores gendered performance, labor, and healing from a non-binary trans perspective. Grounded in a hands-on practice of sewing, they also use video, 3D modeling software, and their body to discover and manipulate the infrastructures that shape consciousness, informed by lived experience and mediated histories, queer theory, and Buddhist philosophy. By employing traditional craft processes and digital technologies, Sydney works to synthesize intersections and experiences that defy easy categorization or evade acceptance.
Sydney was born in Rochester NY, and was raised in Roxas, Palawan, Philippines, and has lived in the US states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, and Virginia. They completed a BFA in Painting from University of Central Florida in 2013, and an MFA in Painting + Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. They live, work, sleep, play, and cry in Baltimore MD.
