ABOUT

I am a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. My work investigates how textile forms can be translated into & combined with other mediums to speak about vulnerability and healing, the tensions of being, and the traces l, and those before me, leave behind. My current work explores the patchwork quilt as a cultural motif & tradition, crafted out of light paper clay pinched together, and presented as aged fragments, like monuments to something that was, & will continue. In highlighting the untidy back of the pieces and foregrounding the marks of my hands that “stitched” and pulled these disparate fragments together, I reveal the messy structure that often remains hidden. My use of paper clay speaks to the concept of removal, where water and paper are fired out in the kiln, leaving us with the beautiful remains of that process. 

 

My forms are influenced by traditional patchwork quilt patterns, as well as the undulating sculptures of artists like Richard Serra, and the many forms that fabric can take. I also take inspiration from the objects and traces left in my life by my late grandmother, who was herself an artist of many mediums, and left me with a desire to create. The patchwork quilt is a carrier of many stories. It protects and warms the body, expresses creativity in functionality, and is unnecessarily beautiful, demonstrating the necessity of beauty to human existence. Its making process is time-consuming, and each stitch carries the thoughts, laughter, tears, and hopes of the maker. Quilts are vessels of healing, holders of memory, and visual representations of the multitude of parts that make up a person. 

 

In its fragmentary state, my work honors brokenness as something that needs to be acknowledged before the mending can begin, and new things can grow, especially when dealing with generational traces of brokenness. As these fragments are unearthed and brought together, so are the beautiful and ugly parts of what it means to be a person, in a body, moving through this wild life.