Artist Statement

Amassing, repeating, translating. 

Memory, uncertainty, impermanence.

Build a monument to untrustworthy memories,

reiterate them again,

build it up and pull it apart;

look for clues,

build it again. 

I create the structure and in doing so,

the agreement that I will also carry the burden of those emotions.

My ongoing creative research, publications, and exhibitions center queer feminine voices through archival and data-driven investigations of gendered labor and inherited memory. Vernacular, domestic objects become storytellers that propel speculative feminine lives into our present and the future. Utilitarian textiles made for warmth, comfort and protection are also expressions of inherited knowledge; quiet acts of teaching and production that are taken for granted. Familial care and collaborative creation become fragile monuments for quiet contemplation of integral societal work. I posit that feminine/queer labor and self-sacrifice are the often-unacknowledged raw material of our present; directing our attention to this truth could lead us to a more caring future. 

I combine my earliest forms of visual language – quilting, sewing, writing and home construction to create fragile monuments that question the very structure of our universal present. I question the concept and inherent privilege of both term and object ‘heirloom,’ creating instead my own series of magical objects, asking the question what if we built a world in celebration of the other?

I engage in the invisible labor firsthand. I dye my own materials, primarily from natural dyes, I count the minutes, seconds and hours invested in each work; in each stitch, each fastener, each casting. I quantify the value of my life through the lives of objects I create; I understand the edges of my own experience through material translation of those who came before me.