These embroidered, textile works employ traditional techniques taken from hand-embroidery, appliqué, quilting, beading, and stumpwork.
The act of stitching is one that is simultaneously
repetitive, meditative, and industrious. It is also a series of tiny
acts of violence: cutting, piercing, grafting together, that when added
up, become a realized form. The texture of the materials against the
hand, the stab of the needle, the piles of knots, beads, stitches, and
filled forms, creates an intimate and tactile working process.
The
forms bubble, gurgle, boil, and emerge. They stretch and strain against
each other, encrusted by milky blooms of knots or glittering clots of
beads. As they creep across the surface of the piece, they become unruly
and unpleasant, recalling itchy prickles, a parasitic mild, or an
oozing bud.
In these pieces, I am contemplating the inevitability of change and my preoccupation
with its effects, as I reflect on getting older, as well as my worries for the
future of my daughter and the world she is inheriting: one of wonder and beauty
certainly, but also one where beloved animals go extinct, viruses grow stronger
and more deadly, and weather patterns are violent and unpredictable. This
anxiety is built into the work. The
pieces contain a world in which a battle between chaos and control is being
waged.