Full Exhibit Artist Statement: Margins and the Height of Sun

Margins and the Height of Sun takes a look at the cost and majesty of the embodied labors in motherhood. I create pieces that mirror the wonder I’ve found in imperfections, impermanence, and fragility.

These monotypes and translucent papers are cut, woven together, sewn into, and suspended. The materials used in each installation are everyday items. Most significantly, cheesecloth and gauze, which cross the lines between the domestic and medical.

While primarily a printmaker and paper artist, I am captivated by depictions of fiber. I choose cloth-like forms because they capture a juxtaposition of elegance and utility. Many of my pieces include stray bits of thread, threadbare edges, dangling threads, or otherwise worn-looking pieces of cloth.

Depictions of cloth and the incorporation of transparent papers are my visual language for weakness. Each cloth-form ebbs and flows in red impressions across the punctured, paper-thin expanse, symbolizing blood and body in its fragile yet beautiful state. The fibers of the paper, illuminated and hidden, stretched out and sewn up, invite participation in a multidimensional story of wear and tear.

Window Installation: Gather and Release

There are 100 Kozo paper diamonds included in this installation. Each piece was cut and then folded along all four edges to create a margin. The margins were used as a flexible mechanism that allowed the paper to be sewn at a large scale. Gather and Release was made like many projects during my years as a full-time caregiver, in the margins. Small segments at the end of nap time, after dark, after tea, after story time. I mean literal margins of time but also margins of strength. Between moves, babies, and autoimmune diseases, making art is not done out of abundance but exhaustion and weakness. It is necessary; it is beautiful; it is hard.

Despite the margins being small, my internal world feels quite large. My internal world is always bursting at the seams, begging to be let out. This piece was a chance to release my internal world. To let it flow out, as big and as loud as it longs for.

The coloring in the “cloth” came from being interested in how fabric can gather and release dirt or other properties. In domestic life, cloth is used to gather debris and dust which are then released in the flow of water, so it is clean and can be reused for the same task. These hanging paper quilts were dipped in blueberry water. The physical experience of creating art through utilitarian methods, folding, dunking, and then hanging the large paper quilt to dry mirror my experience while conceptually exploring what means to gather and release.