Losing my father in 2007 drove me towards texture and innovative ways of working sculpturally with pulp, while having a child in 2019 deepened my connection to fabrics from domestic spaces and reawakened me to color. The two experiences were not opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather neighboring experiences in rawness and care. In both moments, the smallest gestures accumulate into microcosms that are universes unto themselves.
I make work at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. I gather, tear, pulp and transform different color cotton bedsheets and t-shirts – fabrics that lie close to bodies day and night. I form by hand and press pulped fabrics into large and small wallworks and suspended sculptures with vibrating colors, expanding orbits, abstracted forms, decisive edges, loose spills, torn fabrics, dirt and brick flecks. Recently, I began layering washes of watercolors on my hand-formed paper to bring forward the idiosyncrasies and imperfections of each piece. The forms become active and unruly foundations that are bodily, topographical, and cosmological.
My labor-intensive works serve as portals into elemental, shared human experiences such as birth, love, caretaking, illness, death, and grief. I honor cycles of vulnerability and care by connecting intimate and personal moments to vast patterns and systems.
Waning & Waxing