On Tenterhooks

Sometime in the months after Davy was born I found myself saying I was “on tenterhooks” and realizing I had no idea what it meant.

A tenter is a frame with wicked looking tenterhooks that stretch cloth taut to make it flat.

Once I learned I knew it had to be a metaphor for a piece of art.

Suddenly the word was more accurate than ever with a new visceral understanding of what it meant.

This work is done indoors now, but you can still see holes like this on some bolts of cloth.