"Semmes’s ongoing “Feminist Responsibility Project” began in 2002, when a friend in upstate New York gave her a stack of 1990s-era X-rated magazines including Penthouse and Hustler. “I put them in a drawer for quite a while before I pulled them out and eventually drew on them.” The magazines gave the artist the opportunity to downsize, to imagine, for once, creating clothing for the Lilliputian sized women on glossy 8 x 10 pages rather than larger-than-life figures. In the early aughts, Semmes began to obsessively cover up the nude models, channeling her puritan grandmother (not to be confused with the grandmother who introduced her to sewing as a child) from her kitchen table. “In a way, it was a performance of her,” she reflects, “a prompt, a jumping off point.” And with that, Semmes jumped off into a series that she continues to work on to this day. A few years after its inception, she landed on a title that is both self-aggrandising and silly." - Meka Boyle, Elephant Art Magazine