My work is a blend of fiber art and photography that begins with photos of people, landscape, and soft, out of focus light printed on fabric. I then embroider a shape or gesture into the surface of the image, color matching as I go so the stitches blend into the photo, creating a layered, fusing effect. Photography plays the role of identifier and place in my work. It sets the state of reality within the work, allowing the viewer a context for what is seen. In contrast, embroidery represents the “otherness” I’m exploring, the things unseen but believed to exist. The combination of these two materials together creates an expanded reality, one where the seen and unseen coexist. 

Each piece investigates a different relationship with an invisible being such as the shape of a memory, the weight of loneliness and loss, a wave of nostalgia, or the ringing emptiness of the unknown. The contrast of these relationships being difficult to describe, yet widely experienced, resonates with me. I weave my own understanding of the invisible into my work through the lens of lived experience, personal accounts, and research on the subject. I want not only to understand how something works, but what it feels like to encounter it. As I continue to investigate and understand my own relationship with the invisible, my hope is to begin to reveal the fundamental truths of other’s experiences as well.