SLIDING SCALE: Oversized Dresses and Small Moments in Visual Art Performance Laurel Jay Carpenter K[]NESH Space, Issue N°1: Scale, 2018. www.konesh.space ABSTRACT Comparing works from the span of the author’s career, ‘Sliding Scale: Oversized Dresses and Small Moments in Visual Art Performance’ traces the elasticity and slippage in the consideration of scale through a reflective analysis of the sculptural wearable. The body serves as a standard measure; the oversized garments in Red Crest (2003), Again with Gusto (2009) and Of Wanting (2017) each adjust the scale of the performer with a linear extension from the back, connecting and conflating the body with larger space and site. The woman extends, connecting to architecture, to earth and to the surrounding community. In these performance garments, she is also tethered, contained and burdened. Yet, her determination transcends the circumstance, overlapping and inverting multiple measures—shifting scale to scope, and revealing subtle gradations across additional aspects of each performance, from spectacle to intimacy, archetype to identity, and self to collective. This is the sliding scale of scale: the range of small to big, equally balanced, and big to small, revealing how scale, in its relationality, can never be fixed. < Folklore and contemporary pagan practices along with found object and fiber sculptural traditions galvanized during the development and performance of Red Crest (Storrs, CT, USA, 2003). Exploring the archetype of Mother—as psychological construct, feminist premise, and collective identity—the project relied on the support of the local, semi-rural community who generously donated over 100 red dresses from their personal collections, by means of newspaper ads and flyers posted all over town (in the era before social media). A New York City transplant, I was new to this small Connecticut town; I got to know the place by talking with shopkeepers and journalists, going to church fairs and public meals, requesting, from everyone I could, advice and donations for the long red dress performance: my offering to the well-loved site of Horsebarn Hill. Pinning parties and sewing circles were also a significant part of the process; altogether, fabricating the dress took exactly 9 months from conception to creation. A woman appears at the top of the glorious, green crest. The sky is perfect blue. She is dressed in red.