Current
featured
series
Current featured series
“Threads serve as lifelines, timelines, bloodlines, even when I have been “offline” for the past years pursuing a career not fully engaged in art-making.”
HerStory
Herstory Healing map series
Artist Statement: In her poem, A Map to the Next World, Joy Harjo writes “Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. You must make your own map.” As I sought to find my way in this most recent transition in my life, my paperwork piece, HerStory became my map. It is a map of threads and paper that shows where I am and where I have been. It calls up visions of grandmothers, aunts– hands, never idle, mending, crocheting; of threads worked into my prints in serigraphy classes at CMU, threads pulped and cast in early career paper-making experiments, threads pressed on ceramic pieces; and in my drawings and poetry. Threads and papers featured in my work are at once tangible and metaphorical. In a physical sense, thread can become paper and paper can become thread. Both threads and paper can be fragile and vulnerable to the environment, yet both have the capacity for great strength and flexibility.
In HerStory, threads are printed, drawn, sewn, embedded, and layered; unraveling, reaching; leaving only shadows or a row of empty holes. There are the threads in cast-off cloths shredded, pulped into the Rives BFK rag paper sheet that holds HerStory together; threads worked into my hand-pulped papers. Compositional elements and materials in HerStory are rich with embedded meanings important to my art-making and there was much I discovered beyond what I had originally conceived. HerStory was created to celebrate how I have navigated difficult paths to get where I am at this moment. It was meant to “speak” to all women’s journeys through the world. But as I continued to reflect upon how to get to my next path, HerStory also revealed what has been lost, worn, or stolen along the way–parts of my spirit that needed healing before I could commence my journey.
HerStory has been selected for exhibition in the juried Erie Art Museum Spring Show and will be on display March 15-August 9, 2024.
“With simple technology of QR codes that bring sound to the experience, my poetry can be heard as well as read and enhanced with other audio features in the context of the provocative visual compositions.”
“The sensorial qualities of the 2-D Healing Maps are extended in my 3-D wall pieces, free-standing sculptures, and hand-held Paperworks,.”
“Accessibility is further extended as I dialogue with the community and bring other voices into the Paperworks quilted maps.”
I discovered that I needed to create other maps, maps to heal the spirit, so I commenced work on my healing map series by creating more paper, pulping much of it from old artwork and drafts of my dissertation and book chapters, and by writing “calling back to the spirit” poems.
Healing Map #1:Calling Softness Back to Her Spirit
Healing Map #2: Calling Courage Back to Her Spirit
Each healing map features a central paper piece(s) that portrays the focus for the healing (softness, courage, joy), a “calling back to the spirit” poem, and ancient cultural signs for healing (spirals), particularly, women’s healing (pearls). The threads and needlework function as a motif across all of the pieces: an acknowledgement of its sociocultural framing as “women’s work” but more importantly to recognize and honor our connections to each other across space and time as we call upon the ancestral spirits of our mothers and sisters to support us in our healing.
“My paperworks are intimate and intricate, whether hung on the wall, held in hand, or embracing the body in a sculptural spaces. Within this transdisciplinary framework the works become accessible on multiple levels of sensory and intellectual engagement”
“I want to make these healing maps more accessible to others, so I am continuing to work on the series, expanding the sensorial qualities of the pieces and seeking venues to connect and dialogue with the community.”
Extending the sensory properties of each healing map is a QR code that links to an audio file reading of the call. In addition to its practical use to bring sound of the spoken words to the experience, the square visual image of the QR code works compositionally. Resembling a chop (seal on Asian artworks) it similarly functions as an identifying symbol.
Healing Map #3:Calling Joy Back to Her Spirit