James Dill

Tools of Tenderness (2019) is a series of four assemblage sculptures comprised of cement and wire fragments, pigment, spools, shells, thread, washers, and photographs. The title of the work is based on my view of the spool as a tool for inscribing tenderness to found objects. The spools come from my grandmother’s sewing collection and contain her memory. By synthesizing my grandmother’s spools and other sentimental materials to the found cement and wire fragments, the pieces become charged with tenderness and suspend time and memory in a beautiful balance of displacement and belonging. The term “tenderness” resonated with my practice while listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s “Tenderly.” Fitzgerald sings, “The evening breeze caressed the trees…tenderly.” In my practice, I turn to my grandmother’s collection of spools with the desire to evoke tenderness through my handling. It was through this gentle process that I began to realize my desire to evoke tenderness is one that stems from the beauty of time, nostalgia, and sentiment. A type of beauty that appears when a memory is opened and expands infinitely, mirrored in the spiraling of the shell and spool.