What characterizes Puckett’s work, both two- and three-dimensional, is its extraordinarily vivid presence. The attentiveness and empathy she lavishes on a kind of making and materials once associated with drudgery, has burnished them into something more sublime, an ars poetica of the domestic. Like Penelope, Puckett shows us whose in charge—and who should be.

 

—Lilly Wei, Art Critic, 2018

Courtney Puckett’s work occupies a space among countless artists in its use of craft materials like yarn, scrap fabric and tinsel.  Tapestry and weaving have long been tools of storytelling, especially for artists (often women) to whom more traditional art forms have been inaccessible.  Puckett’s piece takes this a step further, her classical approach to the figure lending fresh significance to epics like Homer’s Odyssey, in which Penelope uses weaving to manipulate her patriarchal destiny.  The wrapping and re-wrapping of the foundation of these figures is obsessive and yet tender, with an attention to detail and care akin to the binding of a wound. 

-Kristen Frederickson, Curator, from “Text/ure”, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, 2017