A lot of people find the holidays depressing—a sentiment exacerbated, no doubt, by the season starting earlier each year. Retailers call this ever-accelerating schedule Christmas creep, the inspiration for the title of Faught’s latest group of mournful fiber-art pieces, which reflect on memory and the ease with which emotions become commodified.
The oppressiveness of yuletide, however, is only one jumping-off point for Faught; the other is the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Like that memento, Faught has stitched the names of former lovers onto fringed, handwoven textiles displayed as wall-mounted and freestanding panels.
Rough stretches of hemp in a murky spectrum of blues, purples, reds and browns are the most visually dominant element, though folds of silver and gold lamé do crop up. Even so, much of that fabric is dyed in sepulchral hues.
The downbeat mood is amplified by found items festooning the works like relics: glasses and cups spilling pools of resins colored to resemble wine and coffee; a button reading i’m a name not a number; old VHS tapes (Witness, Silkwood) slipped into pockets in the material. The remorseless march of time is noted in images of clock faces and, in one instance, a movie schedule.
Christmas Creep would make a good title for a black comedy along the lines of Bad Santa, though Faught’s tenebrous irony leaves no room for resolution. Aside from a romantic connection, we know nothing about Bill, Greg, Jason or the others here, raising the question: Are they actually dead or simply dead to Faught and to his skepticism about the rituals enacted in the name of feeling?—Howard Halle