I begin with a boot. In an effort to understand and catalogue, I research the boot. I begin to see patterns emerging: the boot specialists speak of the shaft. I embark on a poetically dizzying relationship with the boot and its shaft. I try to understand these complex feelings. And so I call on artist Sarah McCormack whose explanations of her overheated relationship with cloth helps elucidate the mysterious happenings with the accordion shaft. To guide me through this almost tortuous affair, she creates a slippery mise-en-scene of a profound interpretation of the Moravian or Hungarian dancing shoe: the narrator describes her entanglement with footwear. Through acrobatic language we understand the meaning we attach to clothing and footwear has wandered down a very different path. McCormack’s affair isn’t just a fling with wearability. Her nimble syntax enhances curiosity: just how far can the artist entrap the item and experience a very different kind of archival enjoyment? As a whiz with a million undisciplines, McCormack has been challenging the creative relationships with fabric that form outside of dedication to a confusing industry: fashion. With cloth as one of her many mediums, stepping away from the use of an eponymous brand to enhance feeling over label, she has been weaving a playful and powerful explanation of what it truly means to experience Silk and her daughters: Crepe, Organza, Chiffon and Charmeuse. The Shaft is honoured to join the party

Sarah McCormack is a cloth sculptress whose work grows atop body armatures. She is interested in aging, decay, pickling, preserving, mortality & immortality, necromancy, and roleplaying as a mortician.