The surface pattern on “Four Button Fly” was directly printed from plants and flowers growing just outside of my studio. I cut the pieces first, then prepped the denim with various mordants. Then I laid the wet pieces flat on the work table and arranged sumac, coreopsis and other flora on them before binding the pieces into a tightly wrapped bundle and steaming them for hours in a copper pot.
I have worked with readymade vintage blue jeans for years, and this is the first piece in which I’ve cut and assembled the jeans from raw denim. This is a technical process involving industrial sewing machines and specialized hardware. The piece is a continuous knotted loop where the leg of one pair of jeans connects directly to another like a mobius strip–eight legs and four asses with no beginning and no end. I created the floral camouflage and alternated between tannic brown and indigo blue overdye to introduce more visual confusion in the surface pattern.
Read more: Twisted Sisters / Nina Johnson Gallery
Smile (2023), Bog Skirt (2024), Asses & Angels (2024), Four Button Fly (2025), La noche está estrellada (2025)