Bridgette Bogle stretches, pads, paints, and secures a variety of domestic materials into three-dimensional works that are sometimes free-standing and sometimes displayed on the wall. These soft pieces echo the pliable shapes of the human body, while also referencing objects of household care and coziness like cushions and bedding. Pillows, like the maternal body, are associated with softness and comfort but also signify ideas of overabundance, suffocation, and smothering. In these works, fabric stands in as a metaphor for motherhood and family life. Many of these pieces suggest aspects of Bogle’s own body and experience.
A broader implication in Bogle’s work connects with ideas of craft, ingenuity, and repurposing done primarily by women within the anonymous context of family life and “women’s work” throughout history. But Bogle’s practice also draws from more recent “craft” traditions, including the artists of Gee’s Bend and others such as Ed Rossbach, Rosemarie Trockel, Andrea Zittel, and Igshaan Adams. Bogle is part a lineage of artists who use personal and signature approaches to textiles and fabrics to bring to light issues of labor and identity that are intertwined with modern textile production. Her work illustrates that fabric and sewing are a quintessential link between lived experience and art.
