Artist's Statement

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My work is interdisciplinary — involving drawing and photography and has recently led me in new directions that connect textiles. Multiple recurring themes surrounding memory, place, time, and shared experiences are explored. 

A recent body of work entitled Daemon & Saudade explored emotion, grief, loss, and preservation through a series of photographs, sculptural garments and items of adornment revealing both the beauty and pain of emotion. Intangible memories were given a tactile presence detailing intimate accounts, and ephemeral events such as conversations and recollections which were translated into objects. A series of dress forms displayed garments as worn sculpture that speak about wearing your narrative and comment on a daily routine of camouflage and façade and how one carries on in the face of grief and trauma. Photographs recreated the look of historical tintypes but at a scale impossible to achieve with the original technique. They recall a time of slow documentation and close inspection — a time when images were precious objects. The work captures, and preserves the marks left on us by experiences we live.

During two residencies in 2023, my work pivoted significantly, and I began two new bodies of work called, Holding my breath, and Permission to Stand Still. Although seemingly unrelated, both series are about tangibly trying to hold onto memories and look to the patterns, textures and prints in both the natural and built environments. At first glance they are wildly different, but at the same time, thematically linked.

In Holding my breath, tactile stories explored through stitching and recollections of ignorable moments attempt to catalogue a time, place, or an experience. The work pairs expressive renderings with stitched drawings of site-specific prints and patterns found in places that we occupy. These sensory images are derived from mundane, ignorable objects and décor such as wallpaper, rugs and fabrics but are forgotten, overlooked, or ignored in our daily lives — as if the stitches made the memories more tangible because they become a dimensional series of lines. Embroidery is a slow, intimate process; one that involves careful consideration for the placement of individual stitches. With each successive stab of the needle to the drawing, the paper is slowly transformed, metaphorically linking the method and material to a fleeting memory changing over time. The combination of drawing and textiles becomes inextricable from each other. They are permanently linked, in that, even if the stitching were removed, a fugitive account of the pattern remains and is evidenced through the pierced holes. The memory might be more difficult to identify but its trace is always recorded. 

The second body of work, begun at a residency in Nova Scotia, Canada, was highly influenced by the landscape around the studio. This work attempts to hold onto moments conveying a smaller, intimate experience with the landscape: the sway of seaweed in the water — somewhat floating but still tethered to the rocks, or the rustle of leaves with the wind coming off the ocean, the mist, the fog, and the rivulets as the tide retreats or advances. The process of drawing is relatively quick comparatively speaking to the process of embroidery in Holding my breath, but these drawings represent intentionally taking time to be in one’s place — to push out the business of our lives and just be still ­— to see what is noticed, that is usually unnoticed. This work is about allowing oneself to be slow.