Advanced Fiber Studio (Highlights)
I often draw from my own archive: the detritus of domestic administrative work as an attempt to capture evidence of days lived to claim space and value. I repurpose items that traditionally contain information (recipes, how to books, calendars, to-do lists, needlework, archives of artwork and report cards, doctor visits) and transform their message. I intend to reveal the parcels women are handed, literally and figuratively. We begin to carry them before we know to question them.
My conceptual work includes handmade artist books and sculptural objects but also is realized in performative pieces and wearable art. In some work, I embed signifiers that raise flags: to tell truths or perhaps send messages for women coming up out of care and deep hope for their futures; delivering urgent messaging in an effort to shepherd them safely along.
The work is alternatively a wound, a suture, a binding. If, for no other reason, to reveal the damage. Disappointment and anxiety are often our wingmen. Showing eventualities that may not have been anticipated, through my artwork, is a compassionate effort.
In some of my work, I focus on revealing the bittersweet struggle of the elders. How does it look now that they’re past halfway? What was won, what may have been lost and what is long gone. There were pivot points and unintended eventualities. Aging and loss of agency is a brutal process and, while universal, we politely choose to avoid seeing it.
And then I also make hats. Maybe that’s my rescue drug.