I’m a multimedia artist and a fiction writer who originally trained as a seamstress. Frequently, I combine these practices in order to explore the subtle or overlooked connections between different aspects of our lives. I work with natural, electronic and found materials to create visual, tactile narratives.
Discarded moth cocoons have been my material of choice for the last several years. Using the material feels like my artistic “call” for an increased awareness of the often unseen natural world. The cocoons also operate as a metaphor for mankind’s need for a trans-formative return to the Self, too often just as invisible as nature, and the personal responsibility required for that process. I’m convinced that if we begin to realize that parts of ourselves exist outside of our awareness, it becomes easier to imagine that the natural world might also possess aspects of “life” beyond what we can see and understand.
I most often use discarded gold cocoons, their inherent shimmer a reference to the true value of our overlooked inner qualities. Like so many soft sculptures made from fibrous materials, these cocoon pieces constantly shape shift each time they’re moved. While hand sewing, I sometimes hold the pieces out in front of me, almost a gestational pose, and it’s true that the proliferating, generative nature of the material and the work is as mesmerizing to me as the second hand on a clock. As I sew, I periodically wonder about the point at which a particular artwork began, where it will end, or if it ever will. Isn’t each piece, in some way, a continuation of the one before? Some of the cocoons are riddled with holes, allowing the viewer to see both the outside and the inside of the work. For me, though, the artworks’ hollow, lacy ephemerality has an additional focus: the space that arises around the work itself. Could it be that it is this space that I’m most in search of (even longing for?) when I’m creating an artwork? Objects are necessary: they help us to define culture and provide boundaries that direct and delineate. But it is in the open spaces, the emptiness that holds structure in place, where everything new arises.
My artwork has been in numerous group and solo shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Discarded moth cocoons have been my material of choice for the last several years. Using the material feels like my artistic “call” for an increased awareness of the often unseen natural world. The cocoons also operate as a metaphor for mankind’s need for a trans-formative return to the Self, too often just as invisible as nature, and the personal responsibility required for that process. I’m convinced that if we begin to realize that parts of ourselves exist outside of our awareness, it becomes easier to imagine that the natural world might also possess aspects of “life” beyond what we can see and understand.
I most often use discarded gold cocoons, their inherent shimmer a reference to the true value of our overlooked inner qualities. Like so many soft sculptures made from fibrous materials, these cocoon pieces constantly shape shift each time they’re moved. While hand sewing, I sometimes hold the pieces out in front of me, almost a gestational pose, and it’s true that the proliferating, generative nature of the material and the work is as mesmerizing to me as the second hand on a clock. As I sew, I periodically wonder about the point at which a particular artwork began, where it will end, or if it ever will. Isn’t each piece, in some way, a continuation of the one before? Some of the cocoons are riddled with holes, allowing the viewer to see both the outside and the inside of the work. For me, though, the artworks’ hollow, lacy ephemerality has an additional focus: the space that arises around the work itself. Could it be that it is this space that I’m most in search of (even longing for?) when I’m creating an artwork? Objects are necessary: they help us to define culture and provide boundaries that direct and delineate. But it is in the open spaces, the emptiness that holds structure in place, where everything new arises.
My artwork has been in numerous group and solo shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.