Artist Statement

My work centers around the fragile intersections of transformation, memory, and repair. Through my materiality, I aim to convey the physical and emotional imprints left by time and experience. Through the use of encaustic, embroidery, and printmaking techniques, I engage in physical storytelling. With the contrasting organic nature of my work, I create tension between vulnerability and resilience. 

Stitching serves as an underlying motif of my work, evoking transformation, memory, and repair. I create a language of mending. In my more textile-based work, the threads create landscapes of my memory, blending the natural forms of cyanotype with the human intervention of relief printing and stitching. In my encaustic works, stitching becomes a symbolic, visceral process speaking to both the fragility and resilience of the human body as layered encaustic flesh is precariously held together in hopes of healing. 

The materials I use themselves hold meaning. The repetitive nature of both printmaking and embroidery reflects the cyclical nature of change, of growth and decay. The use of my own hair in my work reflects not only my own physicality, urging the viewer to consider themselves as well, but also the maternal lineage that is passed through the mitochondrial DNA present in hair, literally stitching together generations of memories. The surfaces of my work reflect the interplay between construction and destruction as I carve away wax, add and pull out stitches, dip and melt away encaustic. 

Ultimately, I ask the viewer: What does it mean to mend, and how do the traces of that labor shape the stories we carry?