CURRENT WORK
Some ideas take their time.
I usually have more than one project in progress at a time. Some move quickly, while others stay with me for months or years as I work through the materials, the idea, or simply the amount of time they require.
This is where I keep track of the work that is still becoming: projects that are being stitched, folded, built, reconsidered, or slowly assembled one piece at a time.
Some will eventually become finished works. Others may change considerably before they get there.
FIBER ART · SELF-PORTRAIT · REBUILDING · WORK IN PROGRESS
PIECING MYSELF TOGETHER
A self-portrait assembled one piece at a time.
I began Piecing Myself Together before I left an abusive relationship, but at a point when I already knew I was going to leave. The title came from the idea that once I was out, I would have to begin putting myself back together and figure out who I wanted to become.
The work is a quilted self-portrait made from 5,775 individual 1.5-inch fabric squares, assembled slowly and deliberately. The process of piecing the image together mirrors the larger idea behind the project: rebuilding myself one small piece at a time.
STIGMA REDWORK
Examining the language and assumptions surrounding HIV.
Stigma Redwork is an ongoing fiber project examining the words, assumptions, and social judgments that continue to shape how people living with HIV are seen and treated.
The work uses hand embroidery to slow that language down and make it impossible to pass over quickly. I am interested in the distance between what we know about HIV today and the stigma that continues to survive around it, particularly when outdated ideas become attached to real people.
The project is still developing as I determine how the individual embroidered elements will ultimately come together as a larger work.
FIBER ART · HAND EMBROIDERY · HIV · STIGMA · WORK IN PROGRESS
PAPER · ORIGAMI · QUILTING CULTURE · REPETITION · WORK IN PROGRESS
1,000 QUILTED CRANES
A long-term paper project built from repetition and place.
1,000 Quilted Cranes is an ongoing paper project made from origami cranes folded from magazine pages featuring quilts, including publications connected to Paducah’s quilting culture and exhibitions.
I have folded thousands of cranes over the years, so the process is familiar, repetitive, and almost meditative. For this project, the material adds another layer: each crane carries fragments of quilt imagery, pattern, color, and printed history before being transformed into something new.
The project is still developing, both in scale and in how the finished cranes will ultimately be presented together.
RABBITS
A miniature space shaped by careful detail.
Rabbits is an ongoing mixed-media diorama built inside the lower cabinet of a vintage children’s play sink.
The interior is being transformed into a fully realized miniature living room, complete with handmade furniture, windows, a working door with a transom, lighting, and other small domestic details. The space is populated by three needle-felted rabbit figures that are human in posture and movement while remaining clearly animal in form.
The project is influenced by David Lynch’s Rabbits, but I am using that starting point to build my own environment and visual language. Much of the work is in the accumulation of details: constructing, adjusting, lighting, furnishing, and refining the room until it feels complete.
The piece is still in progress as I continue developing both the setting and the figures.
MIXED MEDIA · DIORAMA · NEEDLE FELTING · DOMESTIC SPACE · WORK IN PROGRESS
EMBROIDERY · FOUND MATERIALS · MEMORY · CHILDHOOD · WORK IN PROGRESS
CHILDHOOD MEMORY WORK
Working from the details that stayed.
This developing body of work uses embroidery and found materials to examine childhood memory, fear, confinement, and the physical details that can remain long after an experience has passed.
I am interested in the fragments that survive: rooms, objects, textures, words, and small sensory details that may seem ordinary until they become connected to a specific memory.
Rather than trying to recreate the past exactly, I am using those fragments as a starting point. The work is still developing as I explore which materials, images, and processes best hold the memories I am trying to understand.
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