Brick Quilt

 

2025

I cut the fabric pieces to be the same size as the bricks of my new apartment building. 

Bridges

Some love notes to bridges I cross often--Jose Rizal and Roosevelt.

Honeycomb Quilt

 

2025

Fort Baldwin

A take on Fort Friendship--on a weekend I used the school's playground structure as skeleton for another fort. There were plenty of student and neighborhood families who helped build and enjoy the experience!

Fort Friendship

For my birthday I built a fort in the park. Plenty of wonderful people stopped by! I's so grateful for them.

I'd been cobbling together this for some time--collecting fabrics from special places and inserting references from homes and forts of my past. 

Power in Making

Oil on canvas, 24"x36"

2024-2025

I had been thinking about how power is generated and for what purposes: power as oppression/solitary gain versus power that is co-created and reciprocally benefited from. Power as profit versus power as intimacy. Throughout making this piece I joyously reflected on how I can engage in powerful intimacy through being a more conscious consumer, neighbor, community member, friend, and caregiver to my students and kitties.

Imagery comes from my runs in industrial areas and a lovely crafting afternoon with my friends Dean and Sam.

Journal Quilt

Tests and scraps from the year’s sewing projects so far, threadbare covid shorts, and frayed key ring, 20"x30", 2024

Made this while traveling back home to Illinois. Mostly by hand, some on the sewing machine my mom inherited from her friend. Gave mom and dad a little sewing lesson. 

My friend had the charming idea of a gallery in her new apartment before unpacking. A perfect spot to share this piece. 

Parents' Quilt

cotton fabric and thread, 88"x 106"

2024

One side combines patterned fabrics my parents chose.

The other is quilted with arial views of all the places my parents have lived, color coded as mom-yellow, dad-green, and places they’ve lived together-orange. They are sized proportional to the length of time they lived at each place. 

Thirst to Water

 

Oil on canvas, 36"x48"

2023-2024

This is a cobbling of things that have brought me joy or shown significance over the past year. I have been focusing on healthier and more sustainable ways to navigate anxiety and depression, rather than using coping substances.

I am learning that recovery is not linear, precarious even, but I am putting intent towards it.

The title is lent from A Little Closer to the Edge by Ocean Vuong, “O mother, O minute hand, teach me how to hold a man the way thirst holds water.” A man, in this case, being my own being.

Tether

up-cycled sweater and yarn, 2022-2024

knit and crocheted tube spanning from Sinéad's apartment to mine.

In 2020 Sinéad moved into my apartment building, two doors down. Many nights were spent on her couch, watching each other’s shows, volleying great jokes, and sharing ourselves. We entered a post-lockdown world having made a really beautiful friendship.

I had been knitting and crocheting what would become this piece in small bits, with no real end goal in mind. When Sinéad told me she was moving in with her boyfriend (hi Will 👋), I knew this piece was for us.

She once told me matter of fact, in response to my awe at all she was doing to better herself, “I want to live a full life.” That stuck with me, and is the spirit of this piece as I continue to explore with it.

Thank you Sinéad. I love you. 💕

Improv Quilt

up-cycled fabric, machine pieced and hand quilted, 30"x41", 2023

I wanted to try quilting as a way to “build” in a studio apartment. 
I used scrap fabric and started by practicing some traditional quilt blocks, then cut and combined them improvisationally.

Otherside

Otherside, acrylic on canvas, 36"x48", 2021-2022

I started this piece a few months after coming back to teaching fully in-person. Especially for students, acclimating back to socialization was hard. It was exacerbated by constant covid and close-contact absences. Adjusting back to a full teaching workload was a challenge, as I had to renegotiate how to fit in my own creative time. And the shortcomings of the public education system were becoming clearer to me. For the first time, finishing a piece of art didn’t feel like catharsis. Rather, it articulated the level of depression I was in without pointing to a way out of it.

Sentinel Series

up-cycled fabric, yarn, and found materials, paper mache, 2019-2020

These are each a salve for grief or an armor of personal growth I wanted to foster. These photos are from 2021, when dear friends helped me model the series during our pandemic reunion.

Greener Grass

oil on canvas, 36"x48", 2021

I started painting this in April 2021, when we came back to school in-person part time. To see students play together and to have a routine outside of the house again, amidst the bloom of spring, stirred up so much promise.

Rockaway Phase

oil on canvas, 20"x40", 2021

I was dipping into reserves of joy: playing cards with friends at the beach, being in my hometown friend’s apartment, hikes and views of mountains. The character is of a Baba Yaga witch from Slavic folklore, based off a coin bank of mine. It’s cute and weird and makes me smile.

Soon-to-be Innocent Fun

oil on canvas, 24"x36", 2021

I was wondering how interactions would look different on the other side of a global public health emergency. I looked forward to time spent together being more precious and intentional. It felt like a wrapped present just out of reach. I referenced a vintage photo of the Grand Canyon, and the mountains are from photographs of forts I had made for my two new kittens. The title is Lent from Arthur Russel’s song, Soon to Be Innocent Fun / Let’s See

Something Like a Garden

up-cycled mixed media on paper pulp, 12"x20"

2021

Old Growth

oil on canvas, 24"x36"

2020

Swiftsure

oil on canvas, 48"x108", 2020

I’d been thinking of Swiftsure Bank, which brings water into Seattle from the Pacific, and its similar structure to the latchkey kid cul-de-sac of my childhood, Mulberry Court. Reminiscing on that kid-made community made me long for more and reinforced adult bonds. I used reference images taken by family or me that reminded me of connection or restriction from it.

Shortly before and shortly after beginning this painting, I unexpectedly lost a close friend and my cat. This painting holds a lot of that initial grieving period, and in a way became about that grief too.

Sentinel 5: Excelsis (Hello Stranger)

2020