Lacey Jane Roberts holds an MFA in Fine Arts and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. She completed a BA in Studio Art as well as a BA in English from the University of Vermont. Lacey Jane’s studio practice primarily consists of large-scale site-specific knitted installations that occasionally include guerilla actions. Lacey Jane has served as visiting faculty in the textiles department and a Studio Practice Instructor in the MFA program at California College of the Arts. Her work was most recently included in the exhibition “Capital Jewelers” at Naomi Aron Contemporary Art in Las Vegas, NV. In 2009 she will be participate on a panel on queer theory and craft identity at the College Art Association Conference. More information can be found at www.laceyjaneroberts.com.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

—Audre Lorde

"I want to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools"

—Paul Butler

My current work merges craft with objects of violence and control to examine large structures of power and how they might be interrupted by ways of making that are often labeled as gendered, amateur, and low. By hand-weaving razor wire fences that have been ensconced with yarn knitted on children’s toy knitting machines and morphing seminal craft tools like spinning wheels into cyborg-like creatures, notions of what it means to “master” are thrown into question. To “master” is to wield power over others, but “to master” in the context of craft is to possess a self-sufficient creative agency over materials and tools. I hover between the ideas of Lorde and Butler, reclaiming the mastery of craft to create an alternative set of tools that could potentially dismantle “the master’s house.”