artist statement
Despite the reality that everyone will experience a traumatic event or loss during their lifetime, there are too few words to adequately express the feelings surrounding such an event, whether personal or collective. My work creates a visual language to explore the effect of trauma on the body as well as address issues of longing, memory, mourning, and grief. Just as our skin, with its scars, marks, wrinkles and folds carries evidence of our lives, so do the fibers in which we clothe ourselves. I work in fiber media and techniques as a way to directly involve my body in the process of making as well as reference the physical body where pain and loss is most intimately felt. That my work is made by hand is significant; it has come into direct contact with my body as I have held the materials for long periods of time as I stitch, bind, and manipulate it to create surface tension that often results in tearing and breaking. Rather than seeing this damage as evidence of fragility or vulnerability, it stands as evidence of resiliency; even in fragments, the essential remains.
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