statement

Memories I have from my youth, memories about my friendships with other girls/women were formed under the assumption that I was straight. Which memories are my own? Which memories are correct?

Through embroidery, repetitive hand stitching, printing and dyeing techniques I am actively sewing up the past, literally and metaphorically mending. My practice rests most comfortably between peculiar three dimensional objecthood and semi-narrative works containing drawings and text that speak to the sweetness and trauma of queer coming of age. Enamored with the quilts of Gee’s Bend and history of making due, I piece together fabric as pieces of my memory or lack thereof. The plush objects are both physically lighter than the objects from which I model them after and lighter than the trauma I carry or suppress as a queer/lesbian woman. Choosing to believe in daughterhood, queerness, and home as functional sites for creative practice rather than obstruction that has to be overcome, thus depicted are symbols and iconography specific to the tenderness of becoming or being brought to yourself. This bringing can be right but also unwanted at times, so these pieces are made to be either wrapped up in (the quilt) or projected outward (the object), as to transform my memories. Trauma never comes back to you in same way - I try to make for sure that mine comes back to as a marriage of form and content.