The Names
2021-2022
This body of work seeds out of grief. It is my processing of the year I cared for my Mum as she lived and died with brain cancer. Tumors affected her ability to express herself, my role as carer included acting as translator. I read her needs through non-verbal communication. This connection was beautiful, awful, heartbreaking. As our communication fell away, so did my capacity to describe that trauma.
I returned to the studio after her passing, in search of the language to tell our story. There, the sun cast a stream of light through my window as I worked. Clay came alive, growing plant-like, shape-shifting vessels. Their shadows stretched out, informing their own becoming. Abstract wreaths, unraveling baskets, wriggling spider-hands carried me through grief toward a place of healing. I caught those glyphic shadows in cyanotypes.
The work itself is an act of translation. I transcribe loss to transform it. I search for meaning in the gaps between mediums, in the chasm of lost words. To hold what was lost, I press shadows to the page and bind them in blue.
Blue Gum
2023 (WIP)
String Figures
Fired and Unfired Ceramic studio experiments and composites 2020.
Manuports
2020These ceramic sculptures were assembled alongside foraged driftwood, wolf lichen, granite boulders and photographed in early morning light at Tokopah Falls, Sequoia National Park, September 2020.
SF20
July 2020
Photographs of ceramic sculptures interacting with urban green spaces around Los Angeles.
